


Before the Dawn

by Ranowa



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaker John Watson, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, John is a Mess, Major Character Injury, Platonic Cuddling, Sherlock Whump, Sherlock is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26492635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranowa/pseuds/Ranowa
Summary: Sherlock wakes up the day after Sherrinford.But something isn't right.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 87
Kudos: 192





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Woohoo! I'm back!
> 
> A shortish project, this time (though I was wrong in my initial estimate-- it's four chapters, not two). It's quite self-indulgent, barely a plot to be had, and if I had to sum it up in one word, that word would be "soft." I think after my last fic, I just wanted to offer the Baker Street boys some nice TLC <3
> 
> I've written the first three chapters and roughly outlined the last one, but like I said, there's not much of a plot, here, so there's no fear of you being left off on a cliffhanger or anything. Regardless, if you want to jump in now rather than wait to binge it all in one sitting-- I hope you enjoy!!! :D

Sherlock wakes on the floor.

He wakes up ice-cold, his brain overwritten with a white, suffocating fuzz, and every single inch of his body throbbing.

And he wakes _on the floor._

It takes a moment, for the details beyond that to start to register. And that's the first thing that clicks. That delay.

It takes just long enough that he knows that this is wrong.

Because Sherlock can think faster than this. He understands faster than this. He _is_ faster than this. But he is not. Right now, in this moment, he has been trapped in mud and drying cement. He has been set down in the middle of an impenetrable fog, and the details that he can grasp are murky, with the deductions that form from them stilted. And that's just for the ones that happens at all. Most _aren't._

The answers in the minutia that are his _lifeblood_ are not there.

He hurts. He hurts so much more than he had before. Every muscle, every tendon, every _nerve_ ; they have been stretched out and abused like raw dough. Pulled and tugged and torn until worn with holes, and every one of those holes then aches as if carved with knives.

He hadn't hurt this much at Sherrinford. He hadn't hurt this much at Musgrave, he hadn't hurt this much on the long drive back, shellshocked and shaken but whole, and that was the last that he remembers: the drive back from Sherrinford.

And now--

He is on the floor. Of his bedroom. At Baker Street.

Sherlock touches his face with a shaking hand, his fingertips cold and invisible in the dark.

Outside, it rains. It pours and pours and pours, thunder and lightning and dark sheets of rain, that sound just a little bit like water pouring into a well.

He has a pulse oximeter on one finger. He can't see it in the dim, murky light, but its weight drags on his hand and he knows how it feels, just as surely as he knows the dull ache in his left arm. A needle stick. Drugs?

After everything, drugs! He'd used again! Must have, must certainly have; what other explanation is there? Oh, god. _God,_ no. John is going to--

But no. There are other telltale aches and pains, too, sensations that even his currently dulled brain can categorise: nasogastric tube. Foley catheter. All having been recently yanked free.

The rain drones and it is a dull cushion around Sherlock's head. White noise that mutes and muffles streams of input, but his feet feel soggy and his shoulders are cold and the dampness infests inside his head.

Slowly, _agonisingly_ slow, a final picture is drawn underneath the black fog.

It wasn't drugs. No. It wasn't a relapse. He has been... medicated. _Yes,_ he sighs. _Yes._ That is it.

He has been treated as a patient. For days, if his estimations are correct. For days if not weeks.

This is why there is a gap in his memory. He had been seriously injured, and whatever the injury was, it had been severe enough to relegate him into needing invasive medical care. Medical care that he must have dislodged the last time that he'd woken up, freeing himself from the painful tubes and drips of drugs because he did not want to be drugged, he did not want _this,_ but--

But he remembers no injury. He remembers no hospitalisation at all. He is at Baker Street. _Baker Street._ His bedroom.

Where is John?

John has to be here. The medical equipment ensures it. John wouldn't have left him unattended, not like this. Where--

It hurts. It hurts so _badly,_ oh, _god!_ He is cold and in pain and doesn't know what is happening and doesn't want to know. Was it... _Eurus_. He breathes in again, tasting something rough and sore and stale; the name comes to him as if through an ocean's worth of thick mud. That was it. Eurus. Is it Eurus again? Has she... what? Has she what? What is it that is _wrong?_

John. _John._ Where is John?

_John isn't here._

Sherlock sits alone. He sits alone in the dark, and in pain, and blood smeared under his nose, and he has no idea what has happened to him.

And there is only one thing for it, then.

He needs to go look for answers.

He needs to go look for _John._

Getting to his feet is not going to happen. The idea of moving his legs, of the muscles and dexterity required, it-- he might as well have contemplated sprouting wings and flinging himself out the window. Again. He can not walk. He can not stand. He tries anyway, his fogged brain unable to grasp onto anything else; he curls his legs on the floor and flexes his toes against the wood and it's laughable. It's _pathetic._ His brain calculates that they can't bear his weight and refuses to let him even try to test it.

He flops to the floor instead, stomach-down and his cheek against the cold, hard surface. And inch by inch, he worms his way out into the rest of the flat. 

It hurts. And he is-- _scared._ Why is he so scared? What is _wrong_ with him?

_John?_

_JOHN!_

Sherlock lacks the strength to stand, and the curl of his fingers around the doorframe is terrifying. They feel thin and weak, scraping against the paint with no more muscular strength or coordination in them than he has in his legs.

And he will worm himself out of his room on his stomach if that is what it takes, because he needs-- he needs answers. He needs to _know._ He must know what happened to him, he must know what is wrong with him, he must crawl away from the needle ache in his left arm and he must fling himself away from the pouring rain, and he needs, he needs--

John. _John._ Where is John?

John came home with him. Didn't he? To... to Baker Street. Baker Street, which Eurus had destroyed, but he is here now, with Sherlock. He must be. And Rosie. Rosie is here, too, he's sure of it. He's so sure of it. Where is Rosie; where is John? Where is he? _Where is he?_

It hurts to breathe. It feels like something is squeezing his chest, like he's been shoved into a spring and it is now constricting, constricting and constricting, iron bands that wrap around him until every wisp of oxygen is squeezed out of his throat.

Rain pours and sheets and thunders outside, and he thinks about a well, with John drowning all the way at the bottom.

"I'll tell you what happened, the storm must've tripped the power. He's fine, Mycroft."

John. John?

John is here. His footsteps audible in Sherlock's ears, patterned against the rain. John is in the flat. John was on the move. John is in the kitchen. John is pouring water; the kettle, tea.

John is _here._

 _"John,"_ he tries. Nothing comes out. His mouth is bone-dry and his throat scrapes horribly; he'd kill for a drop of water. _"John?"_

"Then bug his bedroom. You know I already gave you the go ahead. But right now, it is two in the morning, and what I am going to do is hang up, check on Sherlock, then go back to bed."

What is he talking about? And why, of all people, to Mycroft? Why, why--

_"John. John..."_

"Then we can talk about that in the morning. In the meantime, get back to sleep. I will text you if anything at all is wrong. Good night, Mycroft."

Another silence. John, motionless in the kitchen, wordless underneath the sheeting rain.

Trepidation settles in a knot at the back of Sherlock's throat.

"Don't do this to me," John says. Very, very softly, the words joining the drone of the rain in a hush all over the flat. "You can not do this to me, Sherlock."

Do what?

What has he done? What has he _done?_

 _"I'm sorry,"_ he tries to say, but once again, nothing comes out. His mouth is just as useless as his legs and his throat is just as useless as his hands. _"John--"_

The footsteps sound again, the sharp, rhythmic, militaristic footsteps. In a heartbeat, John's shape looms in the dark. Blurry and fuzzy, indistinct, like his microscope is stuck on the wrong setting.

Sherlock lies there on the floor, and can do nothing at all but watch as John marches smartly down the corridor.

Three steps in, he trips straight over him in an obscenity-laced flail of limbs to land flat on his face, right there on the cold floor.

It would've been funny, if Sherlock wasn't so bloody _terrified._

"What the _hell is..."_ grumbling under his breath, now fidgeting in the dark. John stretches his leg and ends up kicking Sherlock with it, squirming on the floor, and Sherlock can still do nothing but sit here and blink his aching eyes and try to focus on the shapes in the dark. "Damn it, what is this--"

A burning white glow bursts to life between them, a light that some dusty, cobwebed corner of his brain recognises as his phone being used as a torch. Sherlock doesn't care what it is, because it _hurts,_ and now he can't even see John. He can't see anything at all, burning red spots seared into his vision and spreading until that's all there is, and it hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_. It hurts and he flinches back and he whines, pressing his fingers to his miserable eyes with a dry, suffocated sob, it _hurts,_ but all there is is silence again. Silence.

 _"John,"_ he begs again. A pathetic, ragged whisper, so hoarse it's deaf even to his own ears. _"J'hn. Turn it OFF. Please. JOHN!"_

John does not turn it off. He doesn't do anything at all.

But in the next moment, the light spins off of his eyes as his phone clatters to the floor, and Sherlock can _see._

John sits wordlessly on the floor just across from him, a crumpled ball of limbs just as much as Sherlock. He stares at Sherlock. Sherlock stares at him. John stares and stares and stares and says nothing, and Sherlock stares back at him and can't say anything at all.

The rain pours.

There are deductions to be made. Attempts at it, pieces to put together and leaps of logic that he can take, but they slip through his fingers like grains of sand. It's too dark, and Sherlock's eyes can't _focus._ There's the shape of John, sitting across from him, bundled in pajamas with his hair stuck up and his hands in his lap, but every time he tries to look closer his head pounds and it feels like he's tumbling weightless down a sheer cliff. He almost keels back over onto his face.

 _"Water,"_ he whispers. He gestures at his throat with a shaking hand. _Water,_ John; surely he can put those pieces together on his own? He must've been asleep for days; he needs water to speak. He just needs a moment, just _one_ , and then the answers will be his for the taking. The _answers._ Why is he hurt? Why is John... what is wrong with John?

Because John is still not moving.

The fear from before takes a massive stride, swallowing anything and everything up inside him until there is nothing else left. Because he'd thought all he'd need to do was find John, because isn't that how it goes? _John Watson, you make me right._ But he _has_ found John, and precisely nothing is different. He has found John and now they both sit here on the cold floor, because Sherlock can barely see and can't speak at all, and John is just _watching him_ mouth soundlessly and whisper for water.

The fear squeezes the air out of his lungs, spots blooming in his vision and growing in his head, and fear slides downward into panic.

"No," John says suddenly. _"No,_ you fucking _don't."_

John vanishes. He just-- he _leaves._ The blurry shape gets up, turns his back, and that's that. He's gone.

 _"J'hn,"_ Sherlock begs. And it's pathetic, but he's terrified again. Oh, god. He sees the look on John's face in the aquarium, and the morgue, and wet and shellshocked at the bottom of the well. He's not good enough again, he's let him down somehow, it's too much, and John is leaving. Oh, god. John is leaving him right here suffocating on the floor. _"JOHN!"_

There's barely the time for one single, desperate gasp before John comes back.

John drops right down onto the floor with him. He cradles Sherlock in the crook of his arm and presses a mask to his face with his other hand, the only support he has to keep him upright as burning hot hands press against his cold face. "No," he's murmuring, just above his ear, _"No_ _,_ Sherlock, you stop that right now. _Breathe._ Breathe with me. In, _in,_ hold it-- _listen to me,_ you stupid. fucking. _bastard._ BREATHE."

But it's not enough. The mask on his face helps a little, and John's warmth helps much more, curled around him from all sides, but none of it is enough. Sherlock's head is empty and dizzy and his vision just keeps swimming with waves of grey. He can't see, he can't speak, he can not even _think._

He's falling.

A heavy weight infects him, as if there has been lead infused into his very blood. He sinks and sinks and sinks to the tune of John's unflinching, rough demands to _stay with me, now, no, don't you dare, Sherlock, stay with me_ , and the only difference this time is that now, he is warm, because John is sinking with him.

* * *

The last thing that Sherlock said to John the night after Sherrinford was on the kerb Baker Street.

He remembers standing there, the taxi idling beside them and John looking up at him past dripping hair and sparking eyes. He touches Sherlock's hand, and smiles a smile that is too big and too white.

"I don't want to talk about this again," he'd said to John, his fingers folding around his. The image looks strange, to remember it now. His own hand, too large and pale; John's, too strong and too still. His knuckles bruised red. "I don't want to talk about Eurus ever again, John."

"You know that you won't.

"What?"

"You know you won't," John had said, a shadow in the grey of dawn. "Eurus won't come up again. Because you don't want her to. We'll never talk about her again, we will never see her again, because this is about what you want, Sherlock, and she isn't it. Whatever you want or don't want. You will have exactly what you want this to be. But..." He lingers for a moment, tilting his head to the side. The rain slicks his already soaked hair down his face, and his smile is all together... unpleasant. "You already knew that, then. Didn't you, Sherlock?"

That's it. That's all that he remembers.

* * *

The next time his eyes open, it is one by one, and John's face falls into focus above him like sand through in his fingers.

He's never left.

He never left after all.

"...erlock. Do it for me. Sherlock. Wake up. _Now."_

A sharp, joyous delight sings through his entire body, and he is so happy he could cry.

John came home. John is home. John is still home. John is here. With him.

"Sherlock," he says again. "Are you with me?"

Of course he is. Silly John; always asking such silly questions. Where else, exactly, might he be?

John's brow furrows; silly question or not, he seems to dislike that he's not gotten an answer. "You need to wake up for me now," he says again, as if Sherlock's eyes aren't open, as if he's not looking at him. "Just for a minute. Sherlock... is something wrong? Can you-- can you blink for me, or--"

Sherlock takes a deep breath, and whispers, "No."

Ah. He can talk now. Lovely.

John stares back at him, his eyes blue and bright and wide. And for just this one moment, nothing hurts.

He wants to say that it makes him feel safe. But after the year they've had, that isn't... that... no. He doesn't feel safe. Not right now, and it aches a bit to acknowledge it, but after the year they've had, not with John, either.

But John is certainly better than the alternative, and the even _better_ alternative to being awake with John, right now, is being asleep with John.

So he says, "No," again, and lets his eyes slide shut.

" _No,_ no. I don't think so." John shakes his shoulder firmly, again and again. It is with the air of a doctor, and not a friend. "I know that you're sleepy. You were sleepy the last few times, too. Just give me a couple minutes and then you can get some more rest." The shaking continues.

He's so tired. And the rain is so loud.

It's still raining.

"No," Sherlock mumbles. His eyes stay shut, the world already fading away. He is _too tired._

John slaps him.

Firmly, but with an open palm, something designed to cause awareness but not pain. But he _slaps him._ Again, with the touch of a doctor. God, _god._

He must really want him awake.

"Just for a few minutes. Can you say your name for me?"

God, god, _god._ "Head's fine," he mutters, and it is. Oh, it's foggy and stuffed with cotton and dizzy, but it's the aftereffects of exhaustion and sleep. The wires connect underneath the fog, he just, he can't... "John--"

"You couldn't answer that question last time. So if it's easy for you now, I am ecstatic. I am over the moon about it. But you need to prove it to me."

Last time, again.

He still doesn't remember a last time.

Maybe something is wrong with his head after all.

"Sherlock Holmes," he fumbles. He listens to the rasp of his voice and slits his eyes open again, just enough to see the fuzzy outline on his right.

"Good. Your address?"

"221Baaak... 221. B. Baker... Street." Sherlock fights his eyes open an inch more, his heart pounding. It's a standard assessment, to gauge patient coherence and cognitive ability, for head injury, brain injury. _Brain injury._

And getting that answer out alone had been just difficult enough that he's suddenly terrified it might be necessary.

John sighs deeply. "Perfect," he whispers. "That's... _perfect,_ Sher--"

But his voice breaks midway through. As if Sherlock's name alone is an insurmountable weight. His voice just breaks, and suddenly, he is-- he is upset. He is frightened. He is emotional. He is worried. About him. Sherlock shifts again, dredging up from the very bottom of the darkest pit, hand over hand. His tongue feels like lead. _"J'hn."_

But John comes back to him immediately, swam into focus just above him. Perhaps he's never left at all. "No," he's saying, "don't do that. Don't get upset. Everything is just fine. A few more questions and you can sleep some more, okay?" He squeezes his hands, tightly, so, so tightly. "Do you know who I am?"

Despite himself, Sherlock rolls his eyes. The crushing panic, and the encompassing pain, and he rolls his eyes straight upwards towards the head of his bed. _"John."_

It's a complaint, not an answer. But just the same, John is satisfied. "Yeah, I know. Boring, isn't it? Can you squeeze my hands?"

He can. And in answer, John's face lights up as if there's been a triple murder in a locked room on Christmas morning. "Brilliant," he says again, "absolutely _brilliant,_ follow my finger, Sherlock--"

He does that, too. And he tries to do something else, but he's not sure what, and whatever it is he's just too tired for it to get off the ground. Sherlock opens his mouth, his lips dry and slow, and John looks down at him with startling wet eyes like stars and a smiling mouth in a way that he hasn't looked at him in a very, very long time.

"Good. Good. _Perfect,"_ John says again. His hands go back into Sherlock's and for a moment, he's about to cry again. "What's the last thing that you remember?"

"Hallway."

John's brow furrows. "Hallway?"

 _"Hallway."_ He tries to gesture to his door, but something catches his hand and doesn't let go. He rolls it again, and it catches again. And _again._ And--

"Hang on, hang on, no. It's all right. See?"

It takes Sherlock more than several moments, the time passed in dull blinks, to realise what John is showing him is his own hand. His own hand, that is too white and too thin, the skin almost waxy and the veins a stark blue, lifted up in both of his. But it's not his hand that John is showing him.

His wrist is restrained in a soft strap. Padded, loose. More than enough give for John to lift up his hand and hold it there for him to see. But it can be all those things, and that does not change what it is at heart.

He is _restrained._

A new kernel of panic takes root, in the same breath as John salted its soil.

"It's just so you won't accidentally hurt yourself. You pulled things out before, if you can remember, in the--" He stops, his eyes widening, and the next word left him on a breath of air. _"Hallway."_

A moment passes in stricken silence. John closes his shining eyes and squeezes his hand, squeezes and squeezes and squeezes. "You're brilliant," he croaks. "You're brilliant. Oh... my god. _Sherlock."_

He doesn't understand.

It takes John another second to sniff and get himself back under control, clearing his throat in the rain. He meets his eyes again and smiles, and Sherlock's fingers are crushed in his hand and he doesn't want him to ever let go.

"It's okay," he says sternly again. Almost as if he's commanding him not to panic. "This is normal, Sherlock. Plenty of patients need this and I know you're not doing it on purpose. You just need to give it a few more days. I'll be with you."

It's all with the air of a scripted speech. The words calm and rehearsed, his thumb rubbing in the joint of his. A speech that he has calmly given Sherlock before and expected to have to give it again.

Which makes it even worse, because _he doesn't remember._

"It's all right," John promises again. He leans over him, his hands fitting back around Sherlock's, and in the next moment he lifts his arm up again. The strap is gone. "I'll have to put them back on when you fall asleep. But only for a little while longer. You're going to get better and you're not going to need it anymore. Yes?"

"...John."

He wants... he wants. What does he want? But his eyes are falling shut again, fluttering closed and dragged down against his very best efforts. He wants answers, he wants to stay awake, he wants to drag himself upright and out of bed and wipe the miserable wetness from John's face but--

John laughs, softly, very softly. It is hot tea and soft jumpers and his hand on Sherlock's face, the fingertips trembling. "It's all right," he says again. There's a soft rustling, and underneath the fog Sherlock first thinks that John is restrapping his arms to the bed, but then all there is is the duvet being pulled closer to his chin. "Get some more rest. You'll feel better when you wake up."

He doubts that. He doubts that very much, because he feels like death warmed over, and he still does not have one. single. _answer._

But Sherlock does not remotely have the strength to resist.

His eyes are already shut and he sinks into the mattress, the new warmth and John's weight folded around him, and even if Moriarty himself had risen from the dead again and walked right through that door Sherlock wouldn't have been able to do anything but press his face into his pillow and fall deeper into sleep.

John's hand trails down his face again, very lightly, and felt as if from very, very far away.

_"Just don't sleep for too long this time."_

* * *

The rotisserie of questions keeps coming.

Sherlock surfaces three more times, to his memory. And each time it is to John sitting patiently by his side. Asking him his name, his address, his job; to squeeze his hands, to follow his fingers, to wriggle his toes. Always a simple routine of dull questions and boring tasks, but he is just so _exhausted_ he can't quite bring himself to mind.

His sole saving grace, is that John was never worried.

John sits next to him patient and calm, even when the answers don't come to Sherlock's tongue. He's there when Sherlock panics, holding his hands, and instructing him in a steady, stern voice to breathe, to listen to him, to be calm. He reassures him that it is fine. That it is normal. He explains to him that it is normal that he can't remember things; he says that Sherlock often isn't waking up enough for his brain to get the message to start encoding memories, and that it is perfectly natural. That it will pass. He says that, over and over; he promises that this will not last, and that Sherlock will feel better. All he has to do is let John make it so.

In his more miserable moments, Sherlock reflects, somewhat dully, that it's not as if he has a choice.

But choice or not, what he has is John holding his hands, and shaking his head, and ordering him to breathe. He calmly frees the loose, soft straps without complaint every time, even for Sherlock to slip back into a foggy sleep within minutes or seconds of the ordeal, and he just smiles at him and promises that it will be better next time .

But for all the answers Sherlock gives to John, he never gets any of his own in return.

The rain doesn't stop. And when tries to dig into the palace for an answer, his ears clog with water and salt water stings in his throat and nose, and it's all he can do to let John rub his back under his strong hands and tell him to breathe.

* * *

Finally, the day comes when the fog is just a little less dense.

The questions dwindle, their answers comfortable where they now live on the tip of his tongue. John hands him ice chips instead, and they're clumsy and set in his hands and drip onto the bed, but John is pleased when Sherlock displays the dexterity and coordination necessary to feed himself. He feeds himself.

"John," he says.

"Yes?"

There's not a follow-up, actually. He just wanted to say that: _John._ John. Sherlock closes his eyes, tasting it again. John.

Then, he takes the next step, and sits up.

He's expecting John to stop him, but instead his hands are supportive. He catches his back when Sherlock's efforts amount to a pathetic wriggle and is stuffing pillows behind him, sitting with him and holding him when the dizzy swoon hits. As if he had known it would hit. As if he had expected it.

"It's okay," he's murmuring, right by his ear. "It's okay. Wait it out."

It feels like he's falling even while pinned in place. The weight of the blankets and John's arms steady him, but only just, and everything is still spinning as John holds his shoulders and lifts his head like an infant. "It's okay," again. "You've just been flat for a long time. Give yourself a second; that's it. You're fine. You're fine. You're fine."

John's crying.

It's not audible, not really. Just the faintest tremor in his voice as it softens, growing quieter and quieter under its burden. But he's crying. Sherlock feels the wet tears as they track silently down John's face, falling onto Sherlock's neck, the dip of his shoulder.

He's _crying._

"John?"

John does not answer.

When it becomes self-evident that Sherlock is not going to topple, then and only then does John draw away, with a not so surreptitious sniffle and rub of his eyes on his sleeve. He sits back in seat and looks at him, and... he doesn't know what to do.

He doesn't know what to do, because he doesn't have the slightest clue as to what is going on.

So Sherlock does what he does best. He deduces.

He is in his bedroom, at Baker Street. It is unmistakably his bedroom. The walls and the proportions and high majority of the furniture are identical. But-- then there are things that do not belong. That are not the same. The bed is not his bed. _His_ bed is not equipped with medical restraints. It does not have soft bedrails to keep a patient from rolling to the floor, it does not have cheap sheets that can be stained with water and body fluids and blood with no consequence. It does not have an oxygen tank and mask lying abandoned on his bedside table in preparation for a patient in respiratory distress.

John has treated any number of injuries in this room. He has hung an IV from a nail on the wall, he has stitched wounds over a towel spread across his bed, and on one occasion, even dug a bullet out from his arm, two and a half inches from this very spot. But never before has his room been transformed into something meant for long-term care, and that is what this is. This is not something that happened overnight. This is not something that happened lightly.

And one thing his room most certainly does _not_ have is John sitting next to him, and watching him with red-rimmed, still wet eyes.

Something is wrong with Sherlock. That much is inescapable.

But something is equally wrong with John.

Sherlock touches his face, his cold face with his just as cold fingers. There's a nasogastric tube again, taped to his cheek and rethreaded back down his throat.

John tenses a little, as if he expects to need to stop Sherlock from yanking this one out as well. "Bothering you? Sorry, I didn't really have a choice. You haven't been awake for any long enough stretch of time to eat yet. We'll try tomorrow, if you can handle it."

He closes his eyes again, breathing deeply. Fatigue still hovers at the edge of his mind and tries to claw at him like mud.

"How... how long has it been?"

"Five days, now, since you crawled yourself out of bed. You'd probably been in and out for a few days before it as well, you just did it when no one was watching, you great idiot."

There were several ways John could've interpreted that question. _How long has it been._ He had chosen the safest one.

This does not escape Sherlock's notice.

"Mycroft was here," he settles on next.

"...Yeah. Yeah, he was. This morning." John blinks at him, slowly, his eyes still red-rimmed but an amazed smile starting to dawn. "How'd you know that?"

"I..."

_Don't know._

He doesn't know. He knows Mycroft was here with the exact same degree of certainty that he doesn't know how he knows it. It's like Faith Smith all over again, but it's worse. Because he's not on drugs right now. (Is he?)

"It's okay," John eases, rubbing his hand. "Don't worry about it. Your head's just a bit scrambled up right now; it'll take you a few days more to straighten everything out in there."

The words aren't all that important. What is important is that John is not worried. And if John is not worried about his condition, his medical condition, that John is eminently qualified to assess, then that's because there's not anything to be worried about.

Sherlock swallows around the nasogastric tube, trepidation squirming in his stomach and fluttering in his throat, and tries vey hard to cling himself onto that fact.

"Would you like to talk to him?" John continues, very quietly. "He's not here right now, though he'll be back tomorrow, he said. But I can call him, if you'd-- okay. Okay, no phone call, got it."

He rolls his eyes. "Tell him to go away." He should be angry at Mycroft, after Sherrinford. And Eurus. He should blame him. He should.

There are a lot of things that should've happened.

"Is he all right?" he asks instead. The words stick together inside him but he spits them out anyway. "After... the east wind."

John is quiet for just a beat too long.

"He's fine." He strokes his thumb again, pulling the blankets closer, higher up around him. "Everyone's fine. Including you. It'll take you a while, but you will--"

"Rosie? I mean-- I know she's all right, of course. But where is she? You've been here for five days." This deduction, Sherlock can explain the source to. It's obvious. John has barely moved from that chair for five days. His bad shoulder is so stiff it hurts to move, there's a tea stain set into the sleeve, and he's had to call Mrs. Hudson up just so he can leave the room long enough to shower.

It's absurd, and what he should do is tell John to cease this immediately. He clearly is not about to expire at the slightest gust of wind, so John should not be neglecting himself in this way. John must look after himself, and he must look after Rosie. Sherlock is clearly capable of subsisting alone for at least a few hours every day.

He'd sooner claw out his own throat than say such things aloud.

And John still has not answered him.

"John?" He works his jaw, trying to force his stomach contents down. "Where is Rosie?"

"Sherlock..." A moment passes in silence, and John scoots closer to the bed. He enfolds both his hands around his, looking as if he's not sure what to say.

Something's wrong.

Something is _wrong._

He doesn't realise his hand is shaking until John grips it tighter, pressing it into the warmth of the blanket. "No," John says decisively, and with a firm shake of his head. "We're not doing this now. Sherlock, right now, all that you need to know is that everything is fine. We'll talk about it in detail later but right now, you just need to stay calm, and let me take care of you." He holds his gaze and his hands, still stroking his palm, up and down. "Do you trust me?"

Nothing about this situation is anything that inspires trust. John is _keeping something_ from him, and Sherlock is in pain and exhausted and has possibly never felt worse in his life, and what makes it all worse is the sting of a secret right after John has witnessed exactly what _secrets_ have done to him. He can not take any more secrets.

He opens his mouth, and what comes out is, "Yes."

He does trust John. He trusts John more than he has ever trusted Mycroft, and will likely ever trust him again. _John is family. That's why he stays._

His eyes have slid halfway shut, and he leaves them that way. Not tired enough to go back to sleep, but not awake enough to be capable of anything more than this: lying here, supported on a mound of pillows and in a doze, taking in the feeling of John's warm hands around his.

In any case, what he doesn't want to see is John: upset. And he can tell by the pattern of his breaths alone that that is what he will see if he opens his eyes again.

"Cold," he sighs instead. His hand is the only part of him that's not.

John laughs faintly, the sound almost watery. "I bet." The blankets are pulled closer again, which don't do anything at all for the chill that is pervasive, and lives in the space inside his chest and the cold of his blood in his veins. But when John moves to try and tuck his arm under the covers Sherlock grips back.

A silence passes between them again. John's hand stays. It _stays._

"Get some more sleep," John says again. "Everything is going to be all right now, Sherlock." The chair scrapes, moving in the periphery of his fading vision, and John comes to stand by his head. And his free hand does a very peculiar thing, then: it settles in Sherlock's hair, and it strokes. It strokes like one would pet a cat, except he doesn't feel patronised, or infantilised, or anything at all except cared for. He never wants John to stop.

"J'hn," he breathes. "Still... raining."

He's sinking again into the mattress, a grey fog and warm darkness, something that is safe. He's too tired to fight it off when John strokes his hair again and somehow winds up folded on his side, pressing his face into the pillow. He is never going to move again.

John's hand hesitates in his hair. "It's not raining, Sherlock."

He slides deeper into the blackness, because John's still got a hold of his hand: he'll be there, when the time comes, to lead him back out of it.

* * *

The palace is flooded.

He goes to his files on Sherrinford and Eurus, in hopes of finding the missing pieces that occurred after it. The stairs are crumbling, and the landing is flooded in murky brown water that comes up to his knees and only gets deeper with every step he takes. The room with Victor Trevor and Redbeard is much the same, and outside the windows and through the curtains, it thunders and lightnings. It's a harder storm than has ever been in London before, and it pours and pours and pours until the roof leaks and mould creeps up the walls. Every file that he picks up is waterlogged and heavy, with the ink bled across the page into nothing but an illegible smear.

It pours and pours like the water into the well.

How did he get John out of that well?

He can't remember. There is any number of things that he can't remember and this is simply one of them: the answer is simply not there. There was no logical way that he could have done so, not on his own. He would not, just as surely, have left John down there alone, standing with a skull in his hands and freezing water up to the neck.

Perhaps he hadn't. Perhaps, instead of hauling John up out of the water, he had simply thrown himself into the well to drown with him. And perhaps there was no rescue at all. Perhaps they are both still here, down underneath the water, with a skeleton in their hands and the rain pounding around them, freezing to death in the water because there's no way out, and there's never been a way out.

Sherlock settles himself on the highest floor of the palace, his feet resting on the driest step. He leans his head against the wall and he watches the rain slicking down the windows, sheets of frost prickling the panes. The water level rises.

* * *

The restraints go away.

The feeding tube comes out, and John gives him plain yogurt, tiny bites of dry toast, and a few tiny sips of tea that tastes like heaven.

The tea makes him question Mrs. Hudson. Or, that is, her very notable abscence. He can hear her downstairs at times, but she has never made an appearance in his room. Nor, as best he can tell, has anybody else.

Mycroft has not meddled his way into his business.

Mrs. Hudson has not come into his room with tea and blankets, to fuss at him, chide his recklessness, kiss him on the cheek.

Lestrade has not appeared with case files.

Oh, people have been here. In the sitting room, to speak with John. Likely about him. But nobody has been allowed inside his bedroom except John.

John is afraid of upsetting him. He thinks that the more data he gives Sherlock, the higher the chances of him deducing it on his own. _It._ The unspoken problem, the unknown variable that Sherlock can't quantify and John won't ask of him. Whatever it is that is so wrong, he thinks Sherlock will deduce this if given enough data, and he is trying to stop this from happening.

It's a bubble, is what it is. John has effectively cushioned his existence inside a bubble. Sherlock is confined to his bed, and cold more often than not, in pain, hungry, tired, shivering, frightened, wounded, but safe. He is safe because the situation is static. John asked him to trust him, and he does, so he lets John gently fold his hands around a plastic spoon and yogurt cup, and tuck the sheets around him, and he pretends to not notice when his eyes are rimmed in red or he bites his lip, and it is-- sustainable. He must have _answers,_ but he trusts John, he does, and whatever the answers are, John is keeping them from him for a reason.

He can't stand the apprehension that builds. He can not bear the knot in his stomach that worsens, day by day by day.

But John is not Mycroft.

John does not keep secrets from him. Not unless--

The rain pours, and Sherlock listens to it. When John thinks he is not awake. When John thinks he is safely asleep, and he abandons his chair to stand at the window to his room, his back to Sherlock and his shaking hand covering his mouth. He stands there in the white glow of broad daylight and sunshine, and Sherlock watches his back and listens to the rain pour, and doesn't know what he's meant to think.

* * *

In the end, the needle that punctures the bubble is one single, decisive, very poorly planned word:

"Bored."

He says it to make John smile, mostly. Also because it's true, but the heart of it is just to make John smile. Because it will. It's a return to the normalcy that they both so desperately need. Not even in these past few days alone, because when is the last time Sherlock has said that word to John? It's been months, months and months, and it has been even longer than that since John had responded the way he was supposed to do. But it's supposed to be _theirs,_ their word, his word, that makes John want to tear his hair out and bury his face in a pillow. And smile, for the love of god. _Smile._

So he says, "Bored," and he tilts his head towards John on the pillow, and he smiles, just a little. There's water in his ears and on his face is just a tiny crooked smile.

He thinks John will chuckle, perhaps. He thinks John will roll his eyes, and gently fix the blankets, and tell him to go back to sleep. If he's particularly lucky, John's mouth actually will twitch, and he'll squeeze his hand, and announce in a voice that is rock steady that he's an idiot. A great big idiot.

John stares at him. He sits there, one hand frozen midway through rubbing his bad shoulder, and he stares at Sherlock, with his tired face wiped perfectly clean.

Then he drops his head into his hands, and in absolute silence, breaks down into tears.

It is completely silent. There is no loud wailing or sobbing; even the hitch of his breathing is nothing more than the faintest sigh into the muffled silence of his room. He just folds over on himself and buries his face in his hands, and he _cries._ John Watson is sitting at his bedside on day seven of a vigil that has gone on for much, _much_ longer than seven days, and he cries.

Sherlock's heart drops like a rock.

"J--"

John hurls out of his chair, and throws his arms around Sherlock in a suffocating hug.

He doesn't say anything at all. He just sits there on he edge of the mattress with his wet face buried into Sherlock's shoulder, and he cries. He's shaking down to his core, fingers knotted in Sherlock's shirt, and now he is _sobbing._ He sobs into Sherlock's skin and he doesn't say anything at all, he just sits there and cries and feeds Sherlock's heart through a woodchipper.

Oh, yes, it's his fault. It is _entirely_ his fault. Every single silent, heaved sob is entirely his fault. And he feels it in every one, because each one throbs deep down into the pit of his stomach and the scar on his chest.

But there's more.

John is _in his arms,_ and the details are now inescapable. John has lost weight. John has lost weight that can not possibly be a consequence of a few weeks of late nights and medical duties at Baker Street. John is tired. John is just as tired as Sherlock and Sherlock has spent days barely able to keep his eyes open. John's hair is cut military short and his face is clean shaven but his shirt is a wrinkled wreck and he has never seen him look this badly before. Not even after Rosie's brith, not even after Mary's _death_ had John looked like this.

And it is not just John that Sherlock deduces.

Sherlock, too, has lost weight. He has lost weight that is not a consequence of a week or two of sedation and convalescence. He is careless about his transport but even he can admit that he is skin and bones. He is freezing, he is weak, and ever time he looks down at himself it is to see the jut of his wrists, the knobby curls of his fingers, the emaciated line of his arms. His skin is so white and unhealthy it makes him think of eggshells. Thin, papery, and grey.

He knows the answer.

He _knows_ it.

_When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true._

But right now, there is one thing that is decidedly more important.

"It's okay, John." His coordination is still spotty, so the least and the most of what Sherlock can do is hug him back. He does. He wraps his thin arms around John's shuddering back and every sound that he makes continue to rip his heart to shreds. "I'm fine. I'm _fine,"_ he whispers. "You're here, and I am here, and everything is going to be _fine;_ you've said so. You told me to trust you and you said so. John. _John."_

He's not good at it at all. He is _terrible_ at this, he's made John cry, _again,_ he's ruined _everything,_ but he simply must try, he must. He rambles with whatever he can think to say and whatever it is that spills out finally must be working, because John calms down with it. He stops trembling first, and then he stops gasping, the heaving breaths dwindling to faint, occasional sniffs, muffled still into the the ruined shoulder of Sherlock's shirt. One hand catches gently in his hair and doesn't let go.

"Sorry," John croaks. He takes another deep breath, pressing his face back against his neck.

Sherlock could never feel safer than he does right now: sitting in John's arms, and knowing, with every fiber of his being, that John will _shred_ anything that could ever seek to bring him harm.

There's sun on the streets outside his window, and a gale still howling in his head.

"John." He closes his eyes, and takes in what in many ways feels to be his last breath. "Tell me."

Another moment passes in silence. John does not move. But neither does he protest.

He knows what Sherlock means, and he's not going to insult his intelligence by pretending he doesn't.

John breathes in deeply himself, and then, he lifts his head. He looks at Sherlock with red eyes, and the tight grip he has in his shirt stays. His arms around his back might be the only thing keeping him upright at all. "You're sure?"

No. Yes. What other choice could he possibly have? He must be. He must be sure.

He nods, and waits.

And John takes him by the hand, and leads him out from the dark.

"What is the last thing that you remember, Sherlock? Before this flat, I mean."

This is, of course, not a comforting question to hear.

But at this point, the elephant in the room that it acknowledges is one that he already knows to exist.

"Sherrinford," he lands on. His fist kneads into the blanket, the thin, blue, over-starched blanket. He misses his own. "Well, Musgrave, to be specific, with my sister. We took a taxi home together."

John's brow furrows again. He sits there and watches Sherlock with those red-rimmed, wary eyes, and looks nothing but discomforted. He says nothing for a moment, just watches him, and the fist in his shirt turns into a gentle, steading hand.

Then--

"Sherlock... what year do you think it is?"

No. No. _No._

"2016."

A beat of dead silence grows.

John looks at him, and Sherlock-- can not bear it. There is no safe answer to that question and there is no safe way for John to react to it, but _this,_ this is intolerable. He knows the answer is wrong in some way, which is _terrifying._ But John looks at him and for one long moment says nothing, and oh, _god,_ how big of a piece is it that he's missing--

He has prepared himself for anything. He has prepared himself for John to gently stroke his back and shake his head and say _no, Sherlock._ He is ready to hear a missing span of years. He knows something horrible is coming, because it is only something truly horrible that John would have sought to protect him from.

And yet it is the one reaction that he is not ready for, that is the one that he gets.

A smile spills across John's face as readily as renewed light in his eyes. And he sits there, looking at Sherlock-- and he laughs.

John _laughs._

Sherlock starts to pull back, his hackles raising and a heat prickling under his cold skin. Because John is _laughing at him._ But the moment stretches on and on and John just keeps holding him and laughing, and the smile on his face is the most beautiful thing Sherlock has ever seen.

He says, "You're right. You-- bloody fantastic, amazing, absolutely _insane_ man, Sherlock. You're _right."_

Sherlock stares back.

"I'm... right."

"You're right, you mad genius." John sniffs again but rather than break into tears again, he looks about to jump for joy. "How the _hell_ do you know that? I'm-- you know, I'm a little afraid to ask you for the date now, because I think you'd somehow know that one too. Jesus, you..."

"John."

He sincerely hopes John doesn't ask him the date, because he has no idea what it is.

It takes another moment. John closes his eyes to take a breath, the hands wound tightly still into his shirt, but he nods slightly, a new sense of control coming over him. "Right," he murmurs, not to Sherlock but to himself, and he nods again. "You're right. Sorry." Another breath, and then his eyes are back on Sherlock's.

"Do you remember being shot? By Mary?"

Sherlock nods tightly once. The implications of the question howl in his ears, and somewhere deep in the palace, it's as if another floodgate has been thrown open.

"Right," John says again. "Do you remember-- leaving the hospital, after that? Meeting Mary at Leinster Gardens, and then both of us at Baker Street?"

So far, so good. He gives a second nod, his mouth shut and his jaw clenched. Intelligent speech is a bit beyond him, at the moment.

John sighs. "Good."

For a moment, there is nothing else. Just that one tired word: _good._ John's smile falls as quickly as it had come to life, and he sags, just a little. One of his arms drops from around him, and he stares at Sherlock's chest instead, to where the scar is hidden underneath his shirt. He almost touches it, but his hand stops just an inch away, his fingertips barely brushing against the buttons.

Sherlock doesn't need the rest of the story, actually. He's been given more than enough of the pieces by now, and there is only one final picture that they can click together to make.

But he needs the details from John. He must hear it, because-- oh, _god,_ if it is-- if it is--

"Your heart," John begins. His voice wavers, and he clears his throat, but only once is all that he needs. "Your heart stopped that night, in the flat. You were right. They spent most of the ambulance ride trying to restart it, and then it stopped again, while you were in surgery. You'd torn your stitches and were bleeding back into your chest cavity, and by the time they got you onto the table you were in hypovolemic shock. You should've died, Sherlock. The fact that you didn't is a statistical miracle." He meets his gaze with unwavering, solid blue, his voice thick but steady. "Your surgeon told me the only reason he didn't give up on you is that he was there the first time you'd fought your way back. He saw your heart start beating again after nearly eight minutes of asystole before and he knew he just needed to give you the chance to do it again."

 _I know,_ he wants to say. _I remember. I was there._

_This is old news, John; why are you dredging up old news?_

Because it's not old news, is it?

John doesn't think it's old news to him.

_Because it's not._

"Everything after this was a bit... we're not sure what caused it," John sighs. He squeezes Sherlock's hands, and it is only then that he realises just how tightly he had been holding onto John's. "You got an infection, probably from crawling around an abandoned building with a central line, and especially after your first escape attempt we agreed that we had to keep you sedated. You would've been frightened and in a lot of pain, and that sort of thing is really bad, for patients that are already in such a fragile state. Your heart couldn't take that stress. So we're not sure what the exact time frame is, or what exactly caused it, but--"

"I didn't wake up."

John shifts in discomfort. This time, at least, he manages to not react with amazement to the deduction that has been coming a mile away.

"Yes," he says flatly. Finally. "You didn't wake up."

The storm in his ears howls. He's cold still, and shivering in John's hands, and can't hear himself gasping until John is there to tell him to stop.

"It's okay. _Breathe,_ Sherlock. You're okay now." He maneuvers Sherlock like a boneless mannequin, leaning him back against his fluffed mound of pillows, and then he just sits there with a hand pressed to his chest and the other holding Sherlock to his. "Just focus on me."

He does. He focuses on John, and his steady, calm pattern of breaths: how John's chest rises and falls underneath his hand, and matching his own rhythm to his. In and out. _In and out._

John keeps his hand on his chest, just over the angry, rough skin of the scar, and after a few more heaves, stops eying the oxygen mask like he's about to grab it. He sits there and strokes Sherlock's scar and breathes with him.

The scar that Sherlock has never actually seen before. Because... oh, _god..._

"We thought it was the oxygen deprivation. From when your heart stopped," John tells him gently, when the crest of the panic has passed. "That causes brain damage, and it can cause a coma. But even if that was it, Sherlock, you're doing very well. You've done amazingly with everything so far and the stuff you've had trouble with is normal for any patient coming out of a coma. It's normal. It's temporary. And you are doing _spectacularly,_ Sherlock."

John is a godsend. Because these details are _terrifying,_ but John knows him better than anyone else in the world, and John knows that as frightening as these words are to hear, the only thing more terrifying would be to leave them unknown. At least now he has something. At least now he has the facts to hold onto and start to make sense with.

Because the only thing worse than hearing the words _brain damage_ is having nothing at all.

When the explanation doesn't send Sherlock into another tumble, John nods again, still holding his hand to his chest. "We were just focused on keeping you alive, at first. We didn't feel safe to start letting up on the sedation until you were already halfway healed, so we didn't realise you weren't waking up until you... didn't."

He doesn't remember this at all.

He doesn't remember this at all...

Which means everything that he _does_ remember is _wrong_.

John's hand on his chest is the only thing that keeps him with a level head. It is John that keeps him anchored instead of lost at sea, because now the rain really is only in his head. It is a hurricane inside the palace, because all this time, on some level, he has known that the piles and piles worth of files and records and _memory_ aren't worth the imagined paper that they're printed on. He has known all this time he's been drowning at the bottom of the well that doesn't exist, because _Eurus_ doesn't exist, and _none of this_ has been real. Not for months, or... years. _Years._ Has it been years? Oh, _god._ But John does not look years older--

"Sherlock?" John moves a little closer, peering into his eyes with earnest, outright concern. "What are you thinking?"

He doesn't, Sherlock notes, ask if he's all right. Because it is obvious. It is very obvious. He is not.

And Sherlock can't ask what he's supposed to. He can't ask _how long has it been_ because his throat sticks and his hands shake and he doesn't want to know the answer.

"I... _I..."_

John says something else, something that's muffled underneath the storm in his head. He's pulled closer again and his back curls without the pillow's support like a felled tree, bringing his face into John's shoulder. "It's okay," John tells him again, rubbing up and down his back, gently rocking him, almost like a child. "It's going to be okay. We're over the worst of it now. You woke up, _Jesus Christ,_ you came back to me, Sherlock, anything else--"

"I thought you went back to Mary."

It's not at all what he meant to say. It's not what he meant at all but it comes out, and John flinches backwards as if he's been struck. _"Mary?"_ he repeats. "The woman that shot you, Mary? You remember that she shot you? Sherlock--" He stammers through a laugh, a disbelieving, stunned _laugh._ "Why the hell would I go back to someone that did this to you?"

"Because--"

Because of course he would. Because it's the same day as when John sat there in his kitchen and asked him to be his best man, and Sherlock doesn't understand, because he never expected to be anyone's best friend. He doesn't understand how John is sitting here _holding him like a child_ because every single minute detail is telling him this is not new. Or it is, because it is brand new to _Sherlock,_ but it is not new to John.

Sherlock has been here for months. And John has been with him.

This John isn't wearing his wedding ring, either.

"Okay. Okay." John shakes his head and his hand moves to his face, and it's not until he traces away the tears that he realises he's _crying._ "Remember what I said, about this being normal? Yeah. This is normal, Sherlock. Being overly emotional is normal. It's what happens when your brain's shaken up, and right now I really couldn't care if you were as weepy as a drunk for the rest of our lives, so you are just going to have to get over the fact that you're using my jumper as a tissue." He rubs Sherlock's back again and waits, and Sherlock is still too thoroughly rattled to do anything but sit there and let him.

He can't ask. He _can't._

Sherlock sits with his face buried in John's hideous red jumper, and each breath shuddering behind clenched teeth, and he can't do it. _John._ He fists his hand in the itchy cashmere, clinging tighter. _John. Please tell me. Please._

John sits with him quietly for another minute, his hand stroking a firm, steadying line down his back. The tears have stopped, but that doesn't mean John has stopped gently holding his cheek, the evidence vanished underneath his palm.

"It's been ten months since you were shot," he says, firm. "We took you home two months after. We hoped you'd do better, here, and between me and Mycroft's resources we knew we could handle it. Anthony was born nearly seven months after."

"...Anthony?"

"Anthony," John repeats. "Anthony Scott Watson."

_...William Sherlock Scott Holmes. That's the whole of it..._

_If you're looking for baby names..._

Silence settles again. Sherlock can barely breathe and his head is held up only by John's shoulder, each struggling, unsteady gasp one that drives him further into John's arms on the heels of an empty, dizzy swoon.

It's a common name. It is a perfectly common name for a... baby boy, in... London...

 _Rosamund_ Mary _Watson._

 _Anthony_ Scott _Watson._

It's a punch in the stomach.

He'd always known. The middle name. The middle name of John's child. Oh, god.

It's not a coincidence at all.

_The universe is rarely so lazy._

John must understand, of course. Of course he does. But he strokes his hair again, considering, for just a moment. "There's a lot more," he says to Sherlock. "But I'm guessing you don't want to hear it all now. It's... a lot to take in."

Sherlock keeps his eyes shut.

Slowly, inch by inch, he nods.

It's a question if he trusts John, to tell him what's important. And he does.

Another silence drags on.

_Ten months._

"I don't have a sister," he says.

John's hand hesitates in his hair, and he can feel him start to smile. "No? Not that I'm aware of." He pauses again, holding him just a bit tighter. "Unless you're referring to the Queen."

Eurus doesn't exist. The east wind was a story Mycroft told him as a child to frighten him into staying inside at night, and nothing more. Redbeard was his dog that was put down because of illness when he was eight years old. John had never... never... the morgue had never happened. Culverton Smith had never happened. Mary hadn't taken a bullet for him. He hadn't taken a suicide mission for John.

He doesn't realise he's started shaking again until John grips his hands tighter in his. He doesn't say anything, just squeezes them, and Sherlock presses his face even more into his neck and shivers.

"You won't leave," is what he says next.

It means a dozen different things. _You didn't leave,_ and _you won't leave me?,_ and _you_ _ **won't**_ _leave me._ It can be heard any which way and he has no idea which way he means it.

 _"Never,"_ John chokes, burying his face into his hair, and it's an answer to them all.

It stops raining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback is welcome and appreciated!!! Thank you so much for reading, and stay healthy! <3
> 
> As I've said, most of the fic is already written, so updates should come pretty quickly! (And I posted this chapter at 3:00 AM while sick, so I'll probably be back in a day or two to give it a scrub down for typos :P) see you soon!
> 
> [Come say hi on tumblr!](https://problematic-ranowa.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the comments/kudos!!!!!! I wasn't going to post until tomorrow morning, but, well. If you live in the US, then you know why we could all use a bit of good news, tonight of all nights. May this offer at the very least a good-feelings distraction to you, if you need it <3

The thing about a coma is, it's not at all like they show on daytime dramas on the telly.

The first time that Sherlock opened his eyes back at Baker Street, John remembers very well. He'd been called back while out on a walk by an absolutely _frantic_ Mrs. Hudson, and he'd answered his phone to find his landlady in tears. She'd been terrified, that she'd done something wrong, that something was wrong with Sherlock, she didn't know, but he was _awake,_ John must come see, he must come home right this instant and see right now.

So he had. He'd turned right around, and he'd strode back to the flat as fast as he could-- all the while, with his hopes risen to somewhere around rock bottom.

When he'd edged quietly into Sherlock's bedroom, all but holding his breath in the suffocating silence, it was to find exactly what he'd expected.

His best friend, in the exact same state that he'd been in for months: comatose, his glassy blue eyes vacant, and fixated on the ceiling. _Still_ comatose.

Sherlock had been, strictly speaking, in a minimally conscious state. This meant that he could flinch away from painful stimuli. This meant that he could occasionally squeeze John's hands, and sometimes track movements with his eyes. This meant that he could sometimes even make sounds. Low, syllabic moans that did not translate to any words in any language that John knew, but sounds. Noise. John's neurology professor in med school had told them stories (urban myths, really-- he wasn't so sure any had actually been _true_ ) about a patient he'd had in such a state that had had to be restrained, because he'd kept trying to get out of bed. He might've walked the ward if he'd had the muscular ability to stand.

What these things all meant was that Sherlock had very limited, sporadic awareness. It meant that his brain was still functioning, as told by the readouts of the EEG from the hospital. It did not mean that he was awake. It did not mean that he was listening to them.

And it really did not mean that he was waking up.

John, standing there beside his bed, watching Sherlock's empty eyes track his finger, back and forth, back and forth, also noted how tightly Mrs. Hudson was holding onto their detective's hand. He did not have the heart to tell her that Sherlock had never exhibited spontaneous eye opening, but what he had exhibited was eye opening in response to painful stimuli. She was holding his hand so tightly that she had hurt him. His eyes were open because he was in pain.

When Mrs. Hudson had left, wiping at her eyes and more dejected than he had ever seen her to be before, Sherlock's eyes had drifted back shut.

So John has not spent the last ten months standing watch over a motionless, soulless mannequin. It might've been easier in some ways, if he had, but that is not what this has been. He's watched Sherlock blink, in response to his airway being suctioned or the physical therapy John and his day nurse had guided unresponsive limbs through. Sherlock had even retained a somewhat normal sleep-wake cycle, which meant that sometimes, he'd had nightmares, and John had heard those, too. He'd seen his heart rate elevate and Sherlock moan in answer to them, and all he'd been able to do was sit there next to him, holding his hands, and wait it through.

None of this makes it any easier to sit here now, and watch Sherlock sleep.

He's only sleeping. He knows this. Sherlock is absolutely exhausted, his brain still rewiring itself back into wakefulness, and he badly needs the sleep. But if John were to slap him, he would open his eyes and grumble and complain and perhaps even ask for tea. He's not... it's not happening again.

But no matter the fact that Sherlock has never in his life been still, not even in the ten months that he was in a _sodding fucking coma_ had he been still--

Seeing him asleep now, breathing deeply and motionless, tucked underneath the blankets, is _utterly terrifying._

* * *

They keep visitors limited, at first.

Mrs. Hudson is there, of course. She is the first one to get to talk to Sherlock after John, because if there is anyone that won't distress the genius in this state, it is his beloved not-their-housekeeper. She comes in with cups of tea and John's prepared her as much as he can, but the moment that Sherlock's tired, watery eyes lock with hers, she just about bursts into tears.

Sherlock is befuddled, and quiet, and shaken. He manages just a few sips of tea, with John's help, and he lasts only twenty minutes of soft conversation before Mrs. Hudson takes the hint to slip out of the room. His immediate response is a five hour long nap.

But when he wakes up-- because this time, oh, god, he _wakes up--_ and John asks if Mrs. Hudson can visit again, his answer comes promptly in the form of a wane smile, and an exhausted _so long as she continues to bring tea._

Next, Sherlock meets his day-nurse, a very professional, disciplined young man named David, whose presence here has been instrumental in John making sure Sherlock is safe and taken care of. At first John thinks that Sherlock dislikes the man, and it would be understandable if he did-- Sherlock is in a vulnerable, achingly wounded state, and being seen this way by anyone that he does not already trust has to be unbearable for him.

But then, Sherlock breaks his sulky silence, and he asks, "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

David smiles slightly back. "Your brother warned me you might start doing that." He marks a check off on Sherlock's chart and hands it off to John, his hands then clasped behind his back. "Iraq. The circumstances of my injury are classified, but suffice it to say that this was simply a much more suitable next assignment than fieldwork."

Sherlock sits silently in bed, watching the man with heavy, veiled eyes. He licks his lips, and for a long moment, says nothing at all.

Then he leans his head back to his pillows, and his eyes slide shut. "I hope my brother compensates you well."

It's not quite approval. But it's not a rejection, either.

John is relieved for it. Sherlock is still at a stage where he needs to have someone ready to take care of him at all hours of the day, and that somebody needs to be trained, experienced, and good at what they do. John, no matter how much he sometimes wishes otherwise, can simply not be that person. _No one_ can be that person 24/7. Neither is it fair or safe to ask Mrs. Hudson to learn how to look after someone who needs medical care this extensive.

He suspects that Sherlock knows it, and that this is the only reason why he allows his brother's meddling with nothing more than an eye roll of a complaint.

It's on the fifteenth day, just a little over two weeks since the night that he tripped over his best friend huddled on the floor and had his entire life flipped upside down, that he brings in Anthony.

Sherlock goes stock still. It's like the day he asked him to be his best man-- it's as if his massive brain has tripped a massive off switch, and he just sits there and stares at him with the blood drained form his face and his eyes round as saucers. "John," he rasps, but he's not looking at him. He's looking at Anthony.

John takes a moment to carefully nudge Sherlock's unresisting arms into a waiting cradle. Sherlock's not strong or coordinated enough to hold something as heavy as a baby, but he sits upright against his usual mound of pillows with another one stuffed under his folded arms, and John is there with him. Nobody is going to fall. Not his son, and not Sherlock.

Sherlock continues to stare at him as if he's been handed an alien or a bomb.

"He's three months old," John tells him, when Sherlock seems to have simply forgotten how to speak entirely. "Just started sleeping through the night when you stopped."

Anthony makes a tiny, querying noise, blinking up at Sherlock. John isn't sure if he recognises him or not, if he's confused that the figure he's only ever seen supine and still is now upright and talking. He babbles again, and one tiny hand wraps around one of Sherlock's buttons.

Sherlock makes a tiny noise right back, and John's heart aches.

He waits for another minute, because there's another elephant in the room. One that Sherlock seems unwilling to ask about, and John is unwilling to say it at all. He stares down instead, trying not to see the thin hollow of his collarbone, the gaunt dip of his shoulders, the thinness of his fingers holding up his son's head over John's own protective grip. Sherlock doesn't physically need the safety net, he doesn't think, but he can tell how much better it makes him feel so he doesn't let go.

He doesn't want to talk about Mary right now. Not with his son between them, and not with Sherlock sitting there still half-dead because of the bullet she lodged in his chest nearly _a year ago._

He doesn't want to talk about Mary right now, so he fucking doesn't.

"I've never really liked the idea of naming babies after people," he says instead. "It feels too much like you're... giving them that expectation. _I named you after this amazing person that meant the world to me, and now you have no choice but to live up to it,_ you know?"

Sherlock's bright eyes watch him slyly for a moment, a faint smile in place. "Hamish was your grandfather."

"That, too, you show-off." He doesn't even know how Sherlock knows it, but he's right, of course. He's always right and John will never stop being overjoyed to hear it again.

Anthony tugs at Sherlock's button again. _"Ah,"_ he says, and Sherlock is transfixed and motionless and silent.

John chooses to keep his eyes on his son, as he continues on.

"It felt especially cruel to name him after you. Sorry, son, here's the namesake of the biggest brain in London, and also the bravest, wisest, and kindest man I've ever known, hope you don't feel overwhelmed by the shoes you're supposed to fill. And _also_ a bloody household name that'd be instantly recognisable by every Londoner he'll ever meet and have him the subject of tabloid trash articles since the first day of his life, by the way, ta for that." John grins at Sherlock, though is not entirely surprised when he gets nothing back in response.

He doesn't mention that he loves Sherlock's name. He absolutely _adores_ it. He adores every pompous syllable of the silly four-word aristocrat name and he's adored it ever since he saw first saw it in the unredacted medical file that Mycroft had set in his lap, the day they'd started to discuss transferring Sherlock from hospital to Baker Street.

He doesn't mention that he never could've named his son _Sherlock,_ because it would've meant acknowledging that _Sherlock_ was still right fucking there-- he just wasn't ever going to wake up.

And now, here he was. Awake. Alive. _Talking to John._

It's more of a miracle than he'd ever dared to believe he'd get.

"But at the same time, I..." John clears his throat, and he tries to look Sherlock in the eyes, but Sherlock is still staring downwards, transfixed. The look on his face is indescribable. "I wanted him to have something of you. He wouldn't exist without you, I wouldn't even be _here_ without you, and..."

_And I thought you were dying and I couldn't do anything to stop it._

_Don't go. Oh, god, Sherlock, don't go._

He's still so scared. It's been two weeks, and he still wakes up a cold sweat in the middle of the night and has to bolt downstairs to make sure Sherlock's still here, and he can sit here and hold Sherlock and his son in his arms and it's _still_ not enough.

Sherlock's throat moves as he swallows audibly, his fingers thin and cold in John's. He curls a tiny bit into himself, trying to bring Anthony closer while still having the support of the pillows. He still doesn't say a single word.

He's seen many people do this with his son. Mrs. Hudson, of course, who is about one step away from drafting up the legal paperwork to make him her actual grandson. Molly is his godmother and dotes on him to the end of the world, and Greg adores him; even David has taken a liking to him, holding him sometimes for John when he needs an extra set of hands.

The two people have never done this for his son are Mary, and Sherlock.

He's so happy he could burst.

Sherlock tries to adjust his hold again, tilting his face closer and breathing deeply. For a moment, nothing's wrong at all; everything is just as it's supposed to be and this is _exactly_ what John wants.

But then, Sherlock gasps. He stiffens upright, and stares at John as if electrified.

"Roses!"

"...Roses?"

"Roses!" Sherlock repeats, his eyes blown wide. "I smell roses!"

The significance of this is lost on John. But then, the significance of most of the things Sherlock says are lost on him, when he looks like this-- his eyes bright and huge, excitement lighting up on his face like a child tearing open a perfectly wrapped present. "I... suppose you might, yeah. He has a sitter for the days that I work and she has a rose garden. She usually gives me a few whenever I pick him up, and I know he likes playing with them..."

Sherlock just stares back at him.

Sherlock sits there and stares for just long enough that John is starting to get a bit worried, now. He's noticed Sherlock has trouble concentrating and holding focus, that he can zone out mid-conversation with exhausted, drooping eyes, that he sometimes tilts his head and rubs his ears as if he's hearing something that John can't. But not like this, not at all like this. With the state that Sherlock's already in he's just about to suspect an absence seizure, but then Sherlock takes another breath and comes back online with all the vehemence of a drowning man latched onto a piece of driftwood.

 _"Roses,"_ he gasps again. "I... _Rosie."_

There's that word again. _Rosie._ It's not the first time he's said it-- and John doesn't like it. Not one bit.

This is not the first time Sherlock was woken up in a haze, and the first word that he spits out is a name that makes no sense.

But this is not at all like then. But Sherlock's reaction now is, in fact, more worrying than anything else; he's shaking his head suddenly, his impossibly low voice rough and trembling, and suddenly he's nudging his arms at John. "John, John, take him, I--"

John takes Anthony back before Sherlock's trembling arms can drop him, and the moment his arms are free Sherlock sinks back into a blanketed ball and covers his face with his hands. He's laughing and crying all at once, his breaths deep and shuddering, and John has no idea what to do.

This is not the first time that Sherlock has had a reaction like this, at the very least, so he's not alarmed. Sherlock's emotions are haywire because his brain is haywire, right now, reeling in the face of chemical imbalance. Tears, mood swings, and anxiety attacks are all perfectly natural, as much as he can tell Sherlock hates it; this is just part of what recovery looks like, massive genius brain or no. So John sits quietly next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and he waits. He wait it out with his heart in his throat, because all he can do is sit next to him and make sure he knows that he's there.

Sherlock sucks in another deep breath, his white hands shivering, and smiles.

"I'm okay," he promises. His voice is still thick but he's _smiling._ "I'm better than okay. I'm... I'm..."

Anthony makes another tiny noise, reaching up to John for a cuddle. John can't hold him and Sherlock at the same time, so he makes do with leaning his head against Sherlock's, listening to the unsteady pattern of his breaths beside him and how his stunned eyes watch his son.

"You're okay?" John offers gently.

It takes another moment. But then, at last blinking wet eyes, he nods again.

"Yes," Sherlock croaks. "I'm okay."

* * *

Three days after Sherlock had been returned to hospital in an ambulance, Mycroft Holmes had materialised like a dark and foreboding wraith. He had stood there in the open doorway to Sherlock's room, watching the forced, regulated rise and fall of his brother's chest like a veritable grim reaper in the shadows. Both of them had been silent. Both of them had been cold and pale as a corpse.

Then, he had beckoned to John with one crooked finger.

"The only reason that your wife is still alive is because of the pregnancy," he had told John that day. "If you want the baby, then you need to speak up to me now. Because this is a window of opportunity that is going to pass, and when it does, there will be no getting it back."

Mycroft had been _furious._ John, to this day, still doesn't know what it was that the man had done. He doesn't want to know.

What he does know, is that three months after the shooting, news had quietly broken about a media mogul being suspected of child pornography and sex trafficking, and had been killed in a shoot-out at his estate in the search for the children. No children had been found, while the story itself had vanished from the media so quickly that it might as well have never been there at all.

What he does know is the first time he had finally dragged himself away from Sherlock's side to go back home for a shower and change of clothes, Mary had been gone. Everything of Mary's had been removed from the house down to the prenatal vitamins in the cabinets, and of the woman herself, there had been no sign. John had gotten doctor's notes as text messages, ultrasounds left in the mail, and a solicitor that he was pretty sure was retained by Mycroft contacting him unawares to ask him what sort of flowers he'd like at the funeral.

"I'm terribly sorry to be the one to inform of this, Dr Watson," he'd told him. He hadn't sounded very sorry. "But your wife is going to die during childbirth. Very tragic... very tragic."

He hadn't known-- still doesn't know-- what that had actually meant. He doesn't know if it means Mary Watson's name was legally dead while the woman herself has been sent back into intelligence service or _whatever the hell it was_ that she did, or if Mycroft had actually gone so far as to have his wife killed.

He'd have believed it. Mycroft had had Magnussen murdered for it, and Magnussen hadn't even been at fault. John did not know how far Mycroft would go against the person that had pulled the trigger, but he suspected that there would be no limits.

What he does know is that Mycroft had been like a man possessed. His baby brother had been murdered in all but the weight of his still beating heart and Mycroft's patience had run out.

He didn't know, and by that point in time, he had been sitting next to his comatose best friend for six months, and slowly coming to terms with the fact that he was never going to wake up. He was trapped in his magnificent brain and a body that couldn't move with a tongue that couldn't speak. Mary had not just killed Sherlock-- she had done the very _worst_ thing to him that she could've done. One of the very worst fates John ever could've imagined for Sherlock, so much worse than even death, and she'd done it.

He didn't know what he wanted for Mary and he didn't care what Mycroft had done. He just never wanted to see her again.

Seven months after the shooting, and five months after they had taken Sherlock home, his newborn son had been all but dropped off by the stork, and that was that. Chapter over.

Mrs. Hudson, one evening, the words exchanged over cups of tea and the gentle rise and fall of Sherlock's chest, had told him how terrible it was, how everything had turned out for him. At first he'd thought she'd meant Sherlock, but then she'd gone on, her eyes sad, "To have a wife die in childbirth. It's so dreadful, John; and on top of what's happened to Sherlock, too? I... I am so sorry."

John had set his tea down with a clatter, and stared at Sherlock's motionless, waxy face for a long time.

 _It's for the best,_ he hadn't said.

It was.

* * *

That night, John had nightmares again.

He dreamed that Sherlock hadn't woken up. That the night that he had been woken up alerted that the signal from Sherlock's pulse oximeter was reporting a flatline, he'd gone downstairs and found that it was just the power after all. That he was still in a coma and was always going to be in a coma and was never going to wake up.

He dreamed that Sherlock slept on. That Anthony went from primary school to secondary school to university and on, and John's hair went grey and he retired from the surgery, and Sherlock stayed with his eyes shut in his dark bedroom and never moved again.

He dreamed that Sherlock's heart kept beating, but one day they gave him another EEG and what they got back was a blank sheet. That his body was still alive, his heart still beating, but his amazing brain had given up the ghost and ceased any and all activity. The difference between _there's still a chance, because there's always a chance_ and _he's gone._

He dreamed that one day, when John was old and tired, and Sherlock's hair had gone silver at the temples, he reached out to feel his heartbeat, and found none. He dreamed that the heart monitor had been all a lie and the truth of it was that Sherlock died, he had died weeks ago, he had died _years ago_ and John had just fucking sat there and kept staring at and holding the hands and stroking the hair and washing the face of his best friend's corpse because there was no difference between what Sherlock's life had been reduced to and if he'd just up and fucking died.

The same nightmare, really. It was always the same nightmare.

That Sherlock's life had, one way or another, ended that night at Baker Street, and all John has been doing since then has been forcibly prolonging his life and his suffering in the worst way possible.

That night, his shivering hands shoved in the pockets of his dressing gown and his heart thudding so hard in his ears it feels like he's about to faint, John once again staggers to check on Sherlock.

He sleeps on his side, these days, a tired sprawl of limbs with his head in the crook of his elbow. He sleeps with his long legs curled up, and his fingers grasping the edge of his blanket like a child might a toy. The IV is gone, the feeding tube is too, and no coma patient looks like this-- no coma patient can curl up on their side and tuck around a pillow and twitch in their sleep. Sherlock is asleep, but Sherlock will also _wake up._

John's fingers dig so hard into the doorframe his knuckles hurt.

"John."

His feet flinch back.

Sherlock hasn't moved. His eyes are still shut and he hasn't even twitched out of his boneless slump in his bed. But his voice was clear as day. Sherlock isn't _going_ to wake up, because he _is_ awake.

John swallows, drawn back another step. "Sorry," he whispers. His voice, unlike Sherlock's, is trembling. "It's nothing; go back to sleep. I'll see you in the--"

_"John."_

His friend takes a slow, very deep breath. His catlike eyes slit open to watch John half-lidded, and with an almost graceful elegance, he shuffles backwards. He's made strides with his exercises, and has greatly strengthened his core and his back muscles-- he no longer needs the help or support to sit up, but tonight, he still just stays down in his protective curl, watching him with eyes that almost gleam in the dark. 

"You have checked on me during the night seven times that I have been awake for, and four additional times that I was able to deduce in the morning. This means that more nights than not, you have been unable to sleep, and it is because you feel the need to check on me." He blinks at John in the dark, his face perfectly and absolutely inscrutable, and waits. The space beside him is empty and the invitation is clear, but John just stands there and stares at him, and Sherlock's gruff voice speaks again. "It is clear you would get considerably more sleep if you simply slept here."

John, for a moment longer, hesitates.

The bed is big enough for two, and Sherlock, still underweight and shivering and with barely more to him than a skeleton, is positively drowning in the sheets. He looks small just lying there, and John... 

John is getting really damn tired of waking up alone in his room in a cold sweat.

Fuck it. Just fuck it.

"If you're sure."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, and... fair enough.

He starts to stretch out over the sheets, but Sherlock groans. "For god's sake, John," he mutters, "I'm _freezing._ If you are going to insist upon taking up space in my bed than the absolute least you can do is provide a source of warmth while you do it."

"I'm pretty sure you were the one who extended the invitation," he points out. And because Sherlock's hand is cold around his, Sherlock is _always_ cold, nowadays, in a way that even a mountain of blankets can not keep away, John does as asked, and slips under the sheets, too.

After everything that's happened, he's pretty sure they can handle sharing a damn bed.

Sherlock is cold, certainly. But while sharing a bed is one thing, rolling into him for a cuddle is quite another. So John keeps to his own side of the bed, and does nothing more forward than watching the long line of his back in the dark, all the little signs about him that make evident that he is _awake_ and _here_ and _alive._

He might be cold, but he's alive. He's here.

For a few minutes, John doesn't do anything else. He just lies there, listening and watching Sherlock breathe.

The nightmares after Afghanistan were terrifying. He'd bolted out of bed with his heart racing and his hands trembling, and the cold sweat on the back of his neck could last for days after it.

The nightmares after the fall had been heartbreaking. He'd woken up sick to his stomach and with Sherlock's blood on his hands. He'd _cried._ And this time, there'd been no concert-level violinist downstairs to play him back to sleep.

These are... different.

He doesn't flinch upright, panting for breath and clutching the sheets. He doesn't bolt out of bed with his heart racing like he's back on the battlefield, every nerve firing because he's just relived something horrible and terrifying.

He wakes up like it's normal. He comes out of it rubbing his eyes and yawning, stretching as he rolls back over onto his other side. Because what he saw isn't horrifying, it's _real._ For so many months, his best friend, slowly dying while John can do nothing but watch it happen, has been _real._ Because people don't wake up from fucking ten month long comas, that's not what happens. Oh, there's always _a chance,_ just like there's always a chance that John can get struck by lightning and win the fucking lottery, but Sherlock wasn't supposed to wake up. One month turned into two and then three and then ten, and Sherlock _wasn't going to wake up._ He'd lost him again, again right out from under him, again when John could do nothing at all but sit there and beg Sherlock not to go and watch him do it anyway.

He wakes up, and it takes him seconds on end to freeze solid, because it takes him that long to remember that it's _not real._

"When I was-- not awake," Sherlock says suddenly. His voice is low and raspy, and his shoulders hunch a little, back still curled away from John. His long, lanky form is curled almost like a life-size question mark. "I'm not sure I was... I'm not positive it can be classified as a coma."

John sighs. "You weren't exactly just taking a long nap, Sherlock." He's too tired for this.

"I've done research," he goes on, as if John has said nothing at all. "The current studies are somewhat inconclusive, but while there can be limited neurological activity, there is no... sustained dream. None that any recovered patients have credibly reported, and that is not what the imaging studies and electrical activity suggest, either. But that was what I had." He hesitates again, his breaths still a long, slow pattern in the darkness. "I think that I was in my mind palace, though I was unaware of it myself. And it provided me with a sustained delusion. At first to preserve my sanity, but then it became a double-edged sword. I couldn't wake up because I didn't realise there was something to wake up from."

John, once again, is simply too tired to sort through the details. Sherlock is right, what he is saying should be impossible-- but lots of the things Sherlock can do with his mind should be impossible. The fact that he is a medical miracle and a marvel has already been very firmly established.

"It would explain a few things," he offers, when Sherlock does not go on. "Your cognitive recovery has really been miraculous, even for you. Usually a lot of the things patients struggle with are from the brain's activity being so reduced, and with so few stimuli to respond to for so long... if yours was busy putting on a show, it might've really helped. It could've been trying to protect you." He frowns at Sherlock's back, unsure of what else to say. "Do you... want to talk about it? What it was about?"

Sherlock breathes in deeply again, and he says, "No." Just that: one short, flat denial. _No._

There's another few breaths into the silence, Sherlock motionless and boneless beside him, like a puddle that's just been poured across the mattress. Then, his voice even lower than before, he speaks up again.

"Delete this. But..."

One more stretch of silence. Sherlock seems to shrink into himself, just a slightly tighter ball that hunches under the sheets, gathering strength from the cocoon of his arms around his middle. He says nothing for another moment, clearly without words or the will to say them.

"But you are not the only one that is reluctant to sleep at night."

That's it. That's all he says.

John shuffles closer, and tucks an arm around Sherlock without another word.

* * *

From here, there is nothing for them to do but crawl forwards at a snail's pace.

And it is truly a snail's pace that they go.

Sherlock spends more time asleep than not; John, by contrast, is nearly run ragged. He spends an hour on the phone one morning with a nutritionist, and an hour after that on the phone with another doctor at the surgery that used to do PT. He starts off giving Sherlock more vitamins and supplements than he does actual meals, and Sherlock is so insistent that he take the catheter out that he decides it's worth it just to keep him calm. He can tell Sherlock is still taken aback by his own weakness, so much so that he doesn't complain at needing to be carried to the loo, or have a chaperone for a bath-- that allowance is one that John knows is going to wear out very quickly, and he is dreading the day that Sherlock tries to refuse it.

He won't be all that surprised if he wakes up one morning to find that he's tried to crawl himself back into the hallway.

Sherlock does... passably, with a short neuro exam. He's able to read, and his difficulties with writing look to be purely muscular, and not any sort of neurological deficit. He blazes through questions about his work and life with barely even a flicker of hesitation and spends most of it pointing out, in his typical cutting form, that his intellectual capacity is so far above the average patient's that he could've had his ability cut in half and John would never know. That this is a stupid waste of time and he is doing nothing but humoring John in this silliness.

It's a cover, for the fear that is underneath.

Because he struggles some, with staying focused. He loses track of the conversation over and over, and keeps his mouth shut tight when John outright asks him if he feels like he's had trouble thinking, focusing, deducing. There's a stutter when he talks too quickly or gets too excited, one that makes his face flush beet red and he snaps his mouth back shut again. He rubs his ears like he's hearing things that aren't there, and John remembers his earlier worrying comments about _rain,_ rain that hadn't existed but he'd heard it all the same.

It is, all in all, what John would've expected for a patient coming out of a coma.

"You're going to speak with a trained psychiatrist," he speaks sternly, when it is done. He sits closer on the edge of his bed, choosing his words very carefully to make sure that Sherlock understands that this is not something he will have a choice on. "I don't have a background in neurology or psychiatry. There's only so much I can assess, and if there is something wrong, then the sooner we catch it, and the sooner we can start working to help you get better."

Sherlock sulks deeper into himself, but it's an act. It is very clearly an act. Physical weakness is one thing, but John can tell that being forced to confront that there could be something wrong with his _mind,_ anything at all, no matter how understandable, no matter how temporary, is terrifying. And it's a bit terrifying for John, too.

So he throws the exam to the wayside, and he throws stoicism to the wayside, too, and instead just pulls his best friend into a hug.

"You're going to be all right," he tells him. "You're going to get through this, Sherlock."

He means it.

* * *

Mycroft, despite three phone calls, countless text messages, and one Skype conversation from what John guessed to be the embassy in China, does not make a physical appearance at the flat until Sherlock has been awake for nearly a month.

It's poorly timed. It's the first day that they've tried getting Sherlock out of bed for something more than a trip to the bath or the loo, and it shows on his face. He's blinking and grey-faced in his armchair, shivering underneath a blanket and very clearly worn out, and he hasn't even done anything but let David carry him the steps from his bed to the sitting room. Today isn't the day for Mycroft to rile him up.

But here Mycroft is, anyway. Standing in the door to the flat again like a specter summoned from beyond the grave, his umbrella hooked over one arm and a thin file squeezed in the other.

"Sherlock," he greets, and it is for the first time in all the years that John has known him that he can describe the words as _warm_. "You're looking well."

The look Sherlock hurls in his direction is nothing short of poisonous. "I look like a dead man." His eyes slide halfway shut, his shoulders low and his tired hand curling over his face. "John, do not offer tea. It only encourages him to not get to the point."

Sherlock is right. He does look horrible. He's desperately thin and horribly pale, swallowed by old pajamas that had once fit him like a glove, his skin waxy and unhealthy after months of recovery and poor nutrition and lack of sunlight. Mycroft is also right. He looks a thousand steps better today than he had just the month prior. He is _sitting upright,_ he is _looking at them,_ he is _talking._

He doesn't exactly share Sherlock's frustration, when he knows just how bad it's really been.

Mycroft, as is usual, is not exactly put off by Sherlock's attempt to shoo him away. He just looks down at his little brother with a raised eyebrow, ignoring John completely, and sighs. "I see your manners have not improved in the slightest. Very well, then." He sits across from Sherlock, starting to hand his file to them, then clearly realises Sherlock won't take if he does and simply sets it on the table between them. "I have come with suggestions for rehabilitation. There are various facilities that come very highly recommended, most near London-- you are, of course, free to choose, and to consult John's opinion. However, as I understand it, the longer you delay, the harder it will be. I suggest you do not dally for much longer."

John's sense of trepidation rises.

Mycroft is right, in the way he tends to be. He and David have been helping Sherlock through a few simple exercises that he can do in bed, but those are just to prevent further muscular atrophy, and are only a few steps above what they'd done for him while in a coma. What Sherlock is going to need, and soon, is aggressive PT. He is going to need a team of specialists that are trained for patients recovering from brain injuries, and he is going to need them in a facility that is equipped to help him. Because even with Mycroft's money and resources, recovery at Baker Street is simply not feasible.

They can't do this with John, in his forties now with a bad shoulder, bridal-style carrying a six-foot-something tall genius every day out of bed. They can't do this from a second floor flat with sharp corners and narrow hallways that barely has the room for a wheelchair. The can't do this by calling in consultants for at-home visits when what Sherlock is going to need is many hours in exercise rooms with entire teams of specialists nearly every day.

John knows what Sherlock needs. Just as he knows that Sherlock is going to raise _bloody hellfire_ about it.

Sherlock simply frowns at Mycroft, his mouth hidden behind interlaced fingers and his eyes narrowed. He makes no move to take the file; John suspects he doesn't want Mycroft to see how even something that light, he struggles to hold steady. When he does not speak up, David moves forward to look himself, clearly seeing to break the ice slowly solidifying between them.

"Oh, these are good, Mr. Holmes. I would've killed to get into some of these." He flips through the pamphlets, eyes brightening with each glossy sheet that he sets aside. "These all have waiting lists that are months long; this is amazing..."

"Hmm." Sherlock narrows his eyes, his gaze lingering still on Mycroft, and not at all on the file between them. "Then it's a pity the government doesn't compensate their loyal employees as well as they do nepotistic connections. Give the file to John, please." He waves his hand, first at David, and then at Mycroft, a dismissive sort of finger-wriggle that is clearly meant to send him back out the door. "I'll get back to you with my pick in a few days, assuming John determines your suggestions to be legitimate."

John stiffens. "Hang on, sorry?" He looks down at Sherlock, all his mental preparation for how best to cajole him through this minefield stopped in its tracks. "You're willing to go?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "I'm not an idiot, John. Since I don't particularly fancy spending the rest of my life having you carry me everywhere I need to go... as interesting as the prospect might be--"

"Not on your life, Sherlock."

"--then yes, I am willing to concede to the necessity of rehabilitation." He cocks an eyebrow at John, his frown deepening. "Problem?"

He doesn't know what to say. Not beyond a limp shake of his head, because-- of course not. There's not a problem, then. That's what's best. Sherlock needs more care than John can provide, and he needs more care than he can receive at Baker Street. The fact that he's not going to put up a fight about it, that he's going to at least try to go into it willing to work and understanding why it's necessary, is a good thing. It's a very good thing. Of course. Yes.

"...No problem," he lands on, finally. Because what else is there to say?

_Don't go. Don't go. Not again._

"Yes," Mycroft begins, his pale eyes searching carefully between Sherlock and John. "In any case, do please let me know your choice, as well as any other ways I can be of further assistance. Whatever you suspect of my intentions, I am truly just glad that you are all right. It has... been a very long year." He clears his throat, striding to his feet with a loud tap of the umbrella. "If you'll see me out, John?"

It is clearly not just a request. So John, after ensuring that Sherlock is occupied with frowning again at the file, tapping his foot, and in general pretending his brother does not exist, follows through, and trails Mycroft to the door.

Mycroft will never be his favorite person in the world, but if these past long months have proven anything, it's that he does love Sherlock. He has done everything that he could to keep him safe and ensure that his recovery was as comfortable as it could be. John even suspects that the only reason he's waited this long to speak to him in person was because he hadn't wanted to appear to Sherlock empty-handed. If there's one thing that Mycroft hates, hates even more than John, it is to be useless. To have a problem that needs fixing, and to not be able to _help._

It's been a trying year for all of them, and John is just a bit too tired to be hostile to him now. Not when Mycroft is the reason that Sherlock woke up at home, with him, instead in a cold and unfriendly hospital all alone.

"He's recovering well," John starts, when they've made it down the stairs. "I know he may not look it, but he's trying to heal from _a lot_ and in just a few weeks he's come really, really far. He's going to be all right, Mycroft."

Mycroft nods to him once, his face pale and unreadable. "Time will tell." He does up the buttons on his suit jacket in silence and his gaze flicks once to the ceiling, as if listening for any signs of life from the flat above. "Tell me, John. Why did you share my brother's bed with him last night?"

Ah.

So _this_ is what's going on, here.

"I hardly think that's any of your business," he returns flatly. The words come out a bit frostier than intended, because he knows _exactly_ what Mycroft is thinking, and that's not what this is. "Nothing inappropriate happened, Mycroft."

This is the third night in a row he's slept in Sherlock's bed, and they have both slept better for it. That's not Mycroft's business. Neither is it his business that his brother has nightmares, and as tired as he is he still hates to fall asleep at all because there's a part of him that's scared he's not going to wake up.

And it is _really_ not his business that the very mention of rehab has put a knot in John's stomach, because right now all it means is Sherlock going away, and John being left to sleep upstairs again alone.

There's another brief silence. Mycroft just looks at him, and John knows _exactly_ what it is that he's thinking, and he just holds his ground and glares right back. The last thing Sherlock needs right now is to have his brother learning that he doesn't want to sleep alone.

"I see," Mycroft says finally, though just what it is that he thinks _he sees,_ John doesn't know. "I'd advise that you tread quite carefully, John. I don't think I need to tell you that he is not in any sort of state to navigate a relationship at the present time, nor the lengths that I will go to keep my brother safe." He smiles, very slightly, and inclines his head. "Good day."

John watches him go with folded arms and a knot in his stomach.

Pompous git, as Sherlock would say.

* * *

That evening, after David has gone home, Mycroft has pulled his usual vanishing act, and Anthony has been picked up from Molly's, Sherlock finally speaks up.

"You're unhappy."

John flinches back, midway taking a spoonful of mush to Anthony's mouth. Sherlock's not eating much better. "Huh?"

"With... me," Sherlock clarifies. Or he attempts to, because it's actually not much clarification at all. "But I thought that you would be pleased. You would... prefer that I attempt rehabilitation here? With you?"

"I-- what? No. No, of course not, I..." John swallows his next bite, though it goes down a bit tasting like cardboard. He supposes Sherlock is right, in a way-- he's felt out of sorts ever since Mycroft's appearance earlier that day. But he's certainly not unhappy with Sherlock. "I'm surprised a little, I guess. I was expecting you to try and insist against it. But that's a good thing, really. You'll make progress a lot faster if you give inpatient a try at least for a few months."

Sherlock narrows his eyes, leaned back in his chair and watching John with a deep frown. "But you are unhappy," he insists again. Sherlock, oddly enough, is really the one that sounds unhappy here. He lets his fork slip into his lap from numb fingers, his shoulders settling down and the lines in his face deepening. He looks exhausted-- has looked exhausted for hours-- but has resisted at being carried back to bed. John is so relieved to see him up and around he hasn't had it in him to make him go.

A moment later, and a light switch turns on in Sherlock's eyes, the glow of a deduction. "Oh, I _see._ You are unhappy with the situation itself and its continuing difficulties, which... is arguably my fault. You are--"

"Hang on, _what?_ No. No, Sherlock, what?" This is definitely not where he'd seen this going, and he doesn't like it one bit. He scoots his chair around a bit more now to look at him straight on, well and truly concerned. "Mary shot you. How on earth is that _your_ fault?"

"She shot me, yes, but I was the one that left hospital after. Mary did not make me do that." Sherlock closes his eyes and leans his head back, sagging just a little back into his chair with a great, long sigh. "The complications that resulted, while I certainly did not foresee them, are my fault. And you are angry at me for it. And... feel guilty, for being angry."

Understanding hits. Understanding, tinged with bitter regret.

John gives Anthony another bite, needing the time to collect his thoughts, and decide best what he is going to say. This needs to be nipped in the bud, and now. Sherlock's recovery will be that much more difficult if he spends it walking on eggshells around John, or convincing himself that all of this is his fault.

Finally, he wipes his hands, and shifts around to face his best friend. "You're a few months late on this one, Sherlock."

"What?"

"I spent a long time angry at you for it. I spent a long time fucking furious at you for it, and yeah, I did blame you. I don't any more." He holds Sherlock's gaze, making very sure that he has Sherlock's undivided attention. "The facts are, when you decided to pull an escape attempt out the window, you were doing what you thought you had to do. You had just been shot, and you had no reason to believe the shooter wouldn't come back to finish the job, or to do something to me. You also knew I'd never believe you if you tried to tell me without proof. It was a horrible plan for a horrible situation, but the reason you thought you had no choice was because of Mary. She shot you. She put you in that situation."

"But I could've--"

"But nothing, Sherlock. Look, I spent a long time thinking about what you _could've done,_ and I just really don't care anymore." He stands out of his seat to cross over to Sherlock, so no matter how he tries to squirm away he can't hide from John's eyes. "Even if there might've been some other brilliant chess move you'd landed on after weeks of thinking about it, you didn't have weeks. You didn't even have hours, and were still recovering from being fucking shot, by the way-- and even if there was some amazing other way, so what?"

Sherlock's eyes widen. "So _what?"_ he repeats, aghast. He gestures down at himself, at the plate of mush in his lap and the fork he can barely hold and the file of bloody rehab pamphlets sitting on the table at his knees. "This is my fault!"

"And so what if it is?" John challenges back. "Seriously, Sherlock, so what? If you have to blame yourself, then what? What is the point that you're trying to make here; that you deserve to suffer some sort of divine retribution for it? Well--" He gestures, too. He gestures at all the things that Sherlock has just gestured at. The injuries that Sherlock sees as signs of failure that John know are proof of true strength. "I'm pretty sure we've already covered that."

Another cold silence settles. Sherlock seems to shrink, wilting underneath John's hard gaze as if he wants to pull the blankets over his head entirely. "But..." His gaze flickers away and his throat moves as he audibly swallows. "You _are_ angry. With me."

"I'm..."

Sherlock, John decides, and not remotely for the first time, is too bloody perceptive for his own good.

"What I am," he says, when he's gotten his voice back, "is concerned about you. Which is what you need to be. The only thing you need to be focused on right now is getting better." He sits across from him and flips the file out with a decisive _snap,_ spreading a show of glossy pamphlets out over the table as business-like as he can. "Have you given any thought towards which one? The first four are in London, and I'll visit no matter where it is, you know that, but it might be easier on you to stay close to home..."

Sherlock's bright eyes narrow again, glacier blue and piercing against the tired pallor of his skin. He watches as John sifts through the pamphlets, talking through them aloud to find the one that will be best for Sherlock.

His friend has no comment of his own, and the unsettling level of his gaze is enough to discomfort John for the rest of the night.

* * *

Further explanation does not come until that night, when he's helping Sherlock change for bed.

"I think that you were right. My mind was trying to protect me, when this started. The palace. I--" Sherlock sits straighter on the edge of his bed, his hands folded tightly together in his lap and even giving his legs a little swing, but his face is hard and cold and ashen. "It first tried to present to me a delusion that I would enjoy. I think that I couldn't conceptualise that you wouldn't go back to Mary, so you did, but aside from that it tried to give me everything that I could've ever wanted. All within the limits of feasibility."

John isn't entirely sure what Sherlock is trying to tell him. He suspects the deliberately vague wording is on purpose-- Sherlock has been cagey and uncomfortable, whenever John has tried to ask about what it had been like, and tends to dodge the question. After a moment, John simply leaves him be, and returns to his closet to find a pair of pajamas. There's nothing for this but to let him say it in his own time.

But this is not the first time Sherlock has expressed surprise or disbelief, that he hadn't gone back to Mary. And that... that does sting, a little. That Sherlock could ever think him capable of that. Even before the shooting, Sherlock had been one of the two most important people to him in the world, and he bloody _knew that,_ and he still thought so little of him that he could see John going back to his _murderer?_

He doesn't get it. And because he doesn't get it, he has no idea what he's supposed to say to make it right.

"But at some point, I think that my subconscious understood what was going on. It stopped producing a pleasurable delusion, and instead transitioned into something that would be closer likened to a nightmare. It was trying to wake me up. It was..." He trails off into nothing, his jaw clenching again and his face still chalk-pale. "I suspect some part of me... heard you. That it realised you hadn't left after all and perhaps it was worth it to wake up."

It's Sherlock's usual way, of saying something without saying it at all. Either he himself doesn't understand what he's trying to say, or it's too emotional and sentimental for him to manage the words, but either way, what comes out is a puzzle that's left for John to interpret.

And he thinks he knows what Sherlock is struggling to tell him. But first, he needs a moment to decide how he's going to answer.

"Arms, pl-- thank you." He kneels in front of him to start unbuttoning his shirt, the one step of pajamas that Sherlock still isn't yet capable of himself. Sherlock shrugs the shirt off on his own, then manages his trousers with shuffling along the bed and wriggling of his hips and much consternation in general, a wrinkle formed between his brows.

It is, quite frankly, faster, easier, and much less frustrating, if John just does the entire process himself. But allowing Sherlock the independence he can is important, and the only way he'll start to recover is if he actually starts to try. He needs to walk before he can run, and right now, he needs to crawl before he can walk. So John lets him manage the steps that he can without protest or complaint, his heart aching at the sight, and when Sherlock finally kicks his trousers at him just hands him back a clean pair without a word.

When Sherlock is finally dressed again, every step but his shirt still hanging open, the buttons waiting for either John or such time as when Sherlock's fingers will have regained the strength and coordination to manage the complicated task on their own, John knows what he needs to say.

"I'm not going anywhere." He buttons the soft shirt up step by step, focusing down on it and the pale expanse of Sherlock's thin, bony chest. The visible pattern of his ribs, and, worse than anything else, the white divot in his sternum that marks the bullet that nearly killed him. "Not unless you want me to, and to be honest, probably not even then. I don't know what it is you think that's going to happen-- that I'll get bored, or that I'll get frustrated and impatient, or that I'm angry with you for the role you played in how things have turned out-- I don't know what it is, but I can promise it's not going to happen." He finishes the last of the buttons and meets Sherlock's eyes, their deep blue, lingering stare that looks insecure and wary and hesitant all at once. "In case it's somehow escaped your notice, it's been ten months and I'm still here. Because I want to be here."

A frustrated, dependent, and recovering Sherlock is going to be a nightmare. It is _absolutely_ going to be a nightmare. He is going to be the worst patient that John has ever had and this is something that is going to be months or years of outright misery that will test his patience to depths that he doesn't even know are possible.

And it will be better in every way than how he's just spent the better part of this past year.

"Seriously, Sherlock." He squeezes his hand, and then he lets go, smiling at him over his shoulder as he stands to flick out the lights. "Because I think you might've forgot, remember that I'm the one sleeping with you, here, and I just spent all day today realising I have no _idea_ what I'm going to do when you're in rehab, because I think I already miss you and you haven't even left yet. I really don't think you have to worry about _me_ going anywhere."

John slips into bed behind him without another word.

He hadn't meant to mention that. He really hadn't meant to, actually, because the last thing he should be doing is giving Sherlock things to worry about. Reasons to delay or not go to rehab at all. Sherlock, right now, needs to be focused only on himself, and what he needs to do to get better. The very last thing Sherlock should be worrying about is _him._

He'll manage. He will be absolutely, perfectly fine, because the only thing that he needs right now that he doesn't already have is for Sherlock to be okay. Everything else, he'll figure out along the way.

Sherlock doesn't speak again until the lights are out, and John has joined him under the covers, just close enough that his fingertips brush against the fall of Sherlock's shirt.

"My brother thinks we're sleeping together."

John watches the back of his head, how his shoulders shift and move as he curls tighter under the covers. "I know. I told him it's none of his business." He waits for a moment, but Sherlock doesn't speak again. "As for you... "

He goes over the conversation that they just had again, in his head. He thinks about how badly it goes against his every instinct as a doctor and a human being to even consider starting something when Sherlock is vulnerable, dependent, and recovering from a brain injury. He thinks about tough conversations that they've never had, if Sherlock is asexual or not, (if _John_ is attracted to men or not), how this is very clearly not the moment to start asking those questions.

He thinks about how far Sherlock might be willing to go, if he thinks it's what John wants or needs from him.

"I'm happy like this," he says firmly. "If you're not, and you want something more, then that's something we can talk about later. But my priority is for you to be happy and healthy. That's it."

Sherlock chuckles, the sound low, infusing warmth all the way down to his stomach. "Is that so, Dr Watson." He rolls suddenly, turning from one side to the other and shuffling to curl closer to John. One long arm wraps over his stomach, one long leg kicking against his, and one fluffy head rests against his shoulder. He's still cold, he can tell, but Sherlock's limbs latch around him like a contented octopus and it is one of the most reassuring things he has ever felt in his life.

"The current state of things is... quite satisfactory."

John smiles slightly into Sherlock's hair. "Is that genius-speak for _happy?"_

Sherlock chuckles back, this time the sound vibrating into his shoulder. "I suppose that it is."

Another few seconds tick by in silence. John finds Sherlock's hair in his fingers.

"That all that I need to hear, then."

* * *

In a move that John does not see coming, Sherlock does not bring up the subject of rehab to him once after that day.

When John asks himself, Sherlock simply sidesteps the question, telling him that it's being taken care of, and not to worry. John has no idea what that means, and can't deny that he's more confused than anything else. Sherlock certainly won't trust his brother's hand-picked list, here... to be quite honest, he's still a little surprised Sherlock hasn't tried to outright demand John to get a new specialization in PT just for him. But at the very least, he'd expected Sherlock to order him to choose. The fact that he seems to have chosen all on his own, completely without John's input, is... well, he's not sure what to think of it.

But if this is how Sherlock wants to do things, then this is how Sherlock wants things to go. There's nothing for John to do about it but make sure he's stays as healthy as Baker Street can get him, and when the text from Mycroft comes to say they're transferring him tomorrow, he swallows his sense of trepidation, and packs a bag for Sherlock.

The time-frame they're looking at here is hard to gauge, until the teams have gotten a good look at Sherlock; seeing where he is, how much he's able to improve, how quickly he's able to do it. But John knows they're looking at months of inpatient recovery, and what might amount to years of outpatient. It's not just muscular atrophy that they have to deal with. Coordination, muscle memory, his appetite, his health, even things like his concentration-- it's all shot. Ten months of such limited neurological activity means that there's atrophy there, too. The neural networks even for activities as simple as walking have degraded and Sherlock is going to need to build them up again from the ground up.

John will be able to visit him, of course. It's not at all restrictive, like drug rehab would be; he'll be able to Skype him and text him and call him, and Sherlock won't be a prisoner, either. He'll be able to check himself out, when he's gotten stronger. He'll be able to meet with John and Anthony for a weekend, have tea with Mrs. Hudson, hassle Mycroft. Maybe even work on cold cases over his laptop, if that's what he wants to do.

It could be so much _worse_ than it is.

But this is what it is, and... what it is is a bit shit.

They take the drive in one of Mycroft's fancy cars, John holding a bag for Sherlock in his lap while the genius himself lets his head loll against the window, running his thumb up and down his seatbelt. Sherlock doesn't seem interested in doing anything but half-dozing, so John keeps his mouth shut and his hands still, listening to the quiet hum of the engine around them.

Until they wind up in Belgravia, idling outside what is definitely _not_ a picture from any of the pamphlets left by Mycroft.

"This doesn't look like a hospital." John gets out himself and frowns, first at where Sherlock is rubbing his eyes, and then to the two staff members waiting for them. They, too, with their cookie-cutter smiles that remind him of Anthea and a silent sort of discipline that reminds him of David, are not dressed as staff members at any hospital John has ever worked or studied at.

His first impression is a cross between Mycroft's minions, and servants at a bloody manor.

"Because it's not a hospital." Sherlock sighs heavily, allowing the first orderly to lift him out of the car into the waiting wheelchair with nothing more than a tight, annoyed twitch at the mouth. "A few years ago, the daughter of a dignitary-- Mycroft assures I'm not allowed to know the country-- was injured, and needed similar sorts of the aggressive PT that I will require. She was deemed too much of a security risk to be put in any sort of public facility, and instead convalesced here."

"...Your brother bought you... a house."

 _"Us,"_ Sherlock groans, looking exhausted. "Rented, not bought. Though it's needed a few renovations, and I might've had to sell my services to him as payment for the foreseeable future. But yes." His eyes flicker to watch John, trailing numbly beside him as the perfectly professional and quiet orderly who suddenly makes a lot more sense pushes Sherlock into the house. "Though... perhaps we should not have assumed."

 _Assumed,_ John thinks numbly, standing in the foyer. The hardwood foyer with light streaming in from ornate glass windows, where he can glimpse a fully-equipped PT room to the left and a kitchen the entire size of the flat to the right with a second floor stretching out above them that they won't even use. The bloody house is nicer than any place he's ever lived.

"We're to show you and Mr. Holmes ar--"

"Sherlock," Sherlock interrupts, scowling. "Mr. Holmes is your employer."

"You and Sherlock around," the orderly continues on, smiling to John without missing a beat. "The therapists aren't coming until tomorrow, so you have time to get settled and rest for the night."

John still has no idea what to say.

The glimpses he gets of what this house is equipped for, the same sort of orientation Sherlock would've gotten at a more traditional hospital, immediately put to rest whatever there might have been of John's fears. This is a house, not a hospital, but it has none of the problems of Baker Street. It's spacious and already miles better than the rehab hospital John had been in after being shot. It's not a perfect substitute-- as it's explained to them, while they'll always be someone here in person, most of the therapists will communicate with them over Skype after the first couple of weeks, and if he needs any serious pain relief, they'll need to take him to hospital. Mycroft had been adamant that there wasn't to be any opiates in the house, and when John hears it, he agrees, over all of Sherlock's eye-rolling and groaning and huffing. They won't have access to all of the same therapies here, either. First to come to mind is group therapy-- but if he's honest with himself, he knows Sherlock barely would've benefited from that anyway.

It's not at all what he'd been expecting.

Sherlock has gone peculiarly quiet. They're left alone in what's going to be his room, a room that's soft and large and has an attached bath that's set up for a patient that needs support and help standing, and once again, it's easily nicer than anything John had ever imagined it to be. It's a borderline hospital room and it's still nicer than any room John's stayed in barring the five star hotels that Sherlock somehow manages to wrangle them into for cases.

But Sherlock has eyes for none of it.

Which is especially odd, because he's pretty sure all of this has been _his idea._

"What are you thinking?" he settles on, a more neutral line of questioning than _what's wrong?_ Because something, very obviously, is. He takes the bag off Sherlock's lap and starts unpacking, trying to settle his sense of worry.

Sherlock does not answer immediately. His eyes linger on his legs and his fingers dig into his thighs, and when John moves away from him, he takes the first opportunity to stumble and pull himself from the wheelchair to the low bed. He quite nearly falls flat on his face.

"You have no obligation," he says finally. His fingers wrestle into the blanket, wearing wrinkles into the cotton. "Of course. If you would prefer to stay at Baker Street, which of course I should have assumed, then-- you are absolutely free to it. As you can see, there are staff that have been hired precisely to ensure that my needs are adequately met, and I am quite sure they are passable. And..." He shifts again, breathing faster now, still unable to look John in the eye but now seeming to all but curl into himself, like trying to protect his vulnerable core. "And there is also the matter of Anthony-- child-proofing the entire house was not simply not possible, especially given what I will be using it for, but Mycroft has promised at least a safe few rooms for... it does not matter, of course; I'm sorry, John. For thinking that-- never mind. There is a room here for you if you should like to use it, and--"

"Sherlock?"

"--and of course, that is-- I... John?"

John grins, and tosses him a scarf from the pile. The thickest one, the warmest one; the red-striped one that Sherlock insists he won't be caught dead in where anyone can see, and the one that he's taken to wearing around the flat. It lands in a puddle in his lap and Sherlock flinches, staring down at it and then blinking across to John, looking all but befuddled.

John just rolls his eyes as he turns back to the closet.

"You," he says, "are an idiot."

He is, of course, staying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback is welcome and appreciated!!! Thank you so much for reading, and stay healthy! <3
> 
> The story about a coma patient that kept getting up to walk the ward was actually one from my neurology prof, and I'm the one 50% convinced it was an urban myth, not John xD Think of it as similar to sleepwalking-- it's just much less likely a coma patient would be capable of it, for multiple reasons. However, whether that particular story is true or not, coma patients can walk! There's some very interesting research and studies out there, including a video of a comatose patient walking (with support) along with the beat of music.
> 
> [Come say hi on tumblr!](https://problematic-ranowa.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the comments/kudos!!! A little bit of a shorter chapter, this time (as opposed to the 10k ones before!)
> 
> Onwards!

The therapy, as John has predicted it to be, is hell.

No matter how nice the house is, Sherlock is miserable, in pain, and recovering at about the rate of molasses. In fact, John suspects that last bit is what makes it so much worse. It had been one thing, for Sherlock to need help at Baker Street. It must surely feel very different for him to now be three weeks deep into intensive physical therapy and still need David to carry him to the bath. He thinks Sherlock is starting to get it now, how serious this is, how long it's going to take.

In about the space of thirty-six hours, he flips a switch from exhausted to frustrated, impatient, and unendingly furious.

There's also very little that John is able to do to help.

John goes back to work, after the first week, when he meets Sherlock's therapists and sees how things are going to proceed. It's the right thing to do. There's very little John can do except sit there and take verbal abuse next to David, verbal abuse that only leads to Sherlock sulking in a small ball later that night as he tries to apologise but doesn't know how. It's what's best for Sherlock, anyway-- Sherlock is painfully self-conscious with John there watching him, and is all too eager to leap into conversation with him as a distraction rather than focusing on himself and the work he's supposed to be doing. They're both just happier if John picks up Anthony from Mrs. Hudson or a sitter and comes home at night to a very sore, very tired genius dozing on the sofa.

Even then, he's not exactly gold star company.

Sherlock remains exhausted. He remains impatient, embarrassed, easily upset, and in pain. The more tired that he is, the more evident his stutter and concentration lapses are, and the more reluctant he is to talk. The more pain that he's in, the less he seems able to put his attention on anything but lying on the sofa and existing until the next day.

One evening, John had left him to watch Anthony on the sofa while he'd stepped into the other room to Skype with a patient. Twenty-five minutes later, he'd finished the call to find his son sniffling on the floor, hugging his overstuffed teddy bear, and utterly dejected, after twenty-five minutes of being utterly ignored.

John lets it go. Sherlock is expending every effort that he can to keep himself together. What he doesn't need is John, asking him to give even more.

He makes a note to make sure that he leaves David to watch Anthony if Sherlock's having a bad day, and otherwise, keeps his mouth shut.

On the other side of things, Sherlock is active now, too. His payment, for Mycroft finding them a house fit for royalty-- most nights, for an hour or two, he'll bundle up with his laptop and a pair of headphones, for what he describes in clipped, angry words as _translation work: dull._ It does sound dull, to someone of Sherlock's caliber, but John suspects it's Mycroft's attempt to at least give him _something_ to do, to stave off a much more crippling boredom. Sherlock might not be capable of searching out a dealer on a danger night right now, but that doesn't mean he can't still have them.

It's a nice gesture, at least. But John really doesn't think it'll hold out for all that long.

So John, a little over a month into it, waits until Sherlock is taking a rest one night, his hands limp in his lap and his head tucked against a pillow. He looks exhausted, but his laptop is sitting on the floor, waiting for further attention, and nothing at all about the look on Sherlock's face is one that's interested. His eyes are half-lidded and so empty and hollow he looks as if he'd rather watch paint dry.

John shuts his own laptop, and says, "You need a case."

A fleeting frown flickers across Sherlock's face. It's one that fades very quickly back into the recesses of sleep, and he presses his face deeper into the pillow, huffing. "I'm sure Lestrade would be thrilled to have you carrying me around a crime scene."

"You're mobile enough, now, aren't you? I wouldn't be carrying you, you'd be rolling over Anderson's toes, hot wheels." John rolls his eyes at the continuing confusion on Sherlock's face and lets it go, pressing on instead. "I meant over Skype, anyway. We've done it before. Or maybe some cold cases, at least? Something that's not urgent?" A moment passes and Sherlock does not react at all, doesn't even twitch from his tired bundle, and John sits forward, trying to meet his eyes. "I know you're bored. The benefits of mental stimulation and patient temperament in PT aside, Sherlock... you know that this is going to last a long time. And I know you don't want people to see you like this, but you--"

"It's not that."

"...Oh?"

Sherlock hesitates again, his eyes still shut. He starts to shuffle into a tighter ball only to stop with a full-body wince, falling limp instead with the distress and pain clear on his face. He obviously hates it. He obviously wishes John hadn't even brought it up at all.

"I... am bored," he starts finally, his voice so low-pitched it almost vanishes into the pillow. "And it's true the translation work is only ostensibly as payment for the house. But the reason I agreed to doing it is that I'm-- not sure how much else I can do."

John, after several moments of continued silence, simply gets up of his own accord, and switches places to the sofa. He doesn't touch Sherlock but sits at the end, close enough for Sherlock to broach the gap if he wants to, to feel him there if he doesn't. He waits.

"I have had-- difficulty focusing. As you know," he admits, with a tone of voice that suggests he could barely get it out at all. "My concentration lapses, and even when it doesn't, making connections is still... it... the deductions aren't there as easily as they should be. I haven't--" He flinches and suddenly exhales a breath through clenched teeth, face flushing with red frustration. "Did you know that the reason David won't be here this weekend is because he's visiting his parents in Rochester? It took me three days to deduce it! Three _days,_ John!"

John sucks in another breath, and _oh._

 _This_ is why Sherlock has been so oddly silent on the question of cold cases until now.

John sits there silently next to Sherlock for another moment, his heart thudding in his chest. Not for the first time, he finds himself very, _very_ glad that he will never see Mary again.

"...Okay," he says, when he's finally found a way to say it without letting the sick fury underneath into his voice. "No cases for right now. Okay."

A Skype call would definitely be the wrong way to go, at least. He can see that now-- an audience, expecting a show; a case that demands solving, right then, right there on the call. That expectation to perform would only make things that much harder.

A cold case...

A cold case, John is still convinced, would be a good idea. Something that Sherlock can work on in his own time, in his own way, without anyone there to see it happen if it turns out he can't do it. Even John, if that's how Sherlock wants it.

But not right now.

If John pushes him into a case too early, then it'll be the final sledgehammer into whatever's left of his self-confidence. He needs time to recover and right now he hasn't had enough.

And what he also needs to do now is give his consulting genius a pick-me-up, because letting Sherlock stew over this is exactly the wrong way to go about the early days of recovery.

"You know that that's actually normal, though. Don't you?" He looks at Sherlock, and all that he can reach from here is his foot, so he does, and he squeezes. "I'd love to get a look at imaging studies of your brain, but even without them I can guess yours probably looks like a fireworks show at any given moment."

_"Used to."_

"Yeah, used to. And? Your brain got shaken up. A few of the normal pathways got cut, so yeah, you can't think the way you used to. You just need to give it time to form new ones."

Another annoyed crease forms in his brow. "Statistically speaking, at my age, neural--"

"Sherlock, I once watched you learn an entire French dialect in three weeks because you were _bored._ Plasticity is not something that evaporates when you hit eighteen, no matter what silly pop psychology articles on google will have you believe." He squeezes his foot again, then curls down, fetching his laptop up from the floor to slip it into Sherlock's lap. "What you're doing right now, translation work for Mycroft? That's really good. That sort of mental stimulation is exactly the sort of thing that'll help you right now. And you were going to start playing your violin in a few weeks, weren't you? That's great, too, Sherlock. Those are all really, _really_ good things."

Sherlock snorts under his breath, but his eyes finally flicker open again, watching John half-lidded. He wraps one arm around his laptop, hugging it to his stomach like a pillow. "And since when were you a neurologist?"

"Eh, I'm not." He grins back. "But I might've read a bit beyond silly pop psychology articles on google."

His friend sighs again, but it's a little easier than before. He still makes no move to sit up, though, or unfold from around his computer, and instead his gaze just slides off of John as his fingers clench. "And if you're wrong. If at the end of this, I still... I can't think that way anymore."

It is a possibility. It's not Sherlock just being pessimistic-- in this sort of recovery, anything is possible, and there probably are limits to what he's going to be able to do. Limits that are lower than before. He was in a coma from a hypoxic brain injury, and that means there are neurons that died and aren't coming back.

Sherlock knows that, and it does much more harm than good for John to promise unicorns and rainbows when they both know he can't deliver.

"Then you are still the smartest person in this room," he tells him. "In any room that doesn't have your brother in it, and in case you for some reason needed reminding, I stuck by you through ten months of drool. I could not possibly give less of a fuck if you now take twenty seconds on a Rubik's cube instead of ten." He squeezes his foot again, meeting his bright eyes unwaveringly and with another steady smile. "And I _know_ someone that bloody smart can figure out a way to keep doing cases if that's what you want to do."

Sherlock's smile flickers again, like a lightbulb that's faulty. He takes in another breath and finally starts to fold upright, rolling sore shoulders and flexing stiff hands like he wants to cuddle up with an electric blanket, not type. "And since when did you turn into such an optimist?"

It's clearly a rhetorical question, as he shifts his earbuds in a moment later, focusing back down onto his screen. Or it's rhetorical to Sherlock, but to John, it's the easiest question to ever answer in the world.

"When you woke up," he whispers, too quiet for Sherlock to hear him. "I stopped imagining the worst when you gave me the best."

* * *

If he makes himself look for a silver lining, it's that Sherlock's exhaustion is a double-edged sword.

Sure, he's sullen, quiet, and unhappy, just about 24/7. And the result of that is that he's too tired to put up a fight. He doesn't struggle about getting to sleep, he doesn't wake up at one and two in the morning with nightmares, he doesn't sleep for four hours and then call it a night. These days, Sherlock tends to be asleep even before John's gotten Anthony to do the same, and he stays that way straight through John getting up in the morning to go to the surgery.

Sherlock sleeps easier, at least.

John--

John isn't exactly thrilled for the most prevalent image he sees of Sherlock nowadays to be of him unmoving in bed, no. _No, not really._ But if he flinches awake more often than not and has to rub the memory of much harder days out of his eyes as he rolls closer to his perfectly still best friend, then so be it. There are worse things.

And then there are nights when it's still not enough. Not for him, and not for Sherlock.

"Sherlock," John murmurs. "Sherlock-- _Sherlock._ Wake up."

He doesn't dare to touch Sherlock yet. Not now, when he knows Sherlock is sore all over, and the wrong touch in the wrong place could be the equivalent of a red-hot fire poker into an open wound.

But Sherlock just-- mewls. He's shivering on his side in the dark, his brows drawn together and his mouth creased into a tiny frown, and when John calls his name again it pulls out a whimper. A soft, wretched _whimper._ He's shivering under the sheets, his breaths starting to quicken, and John can tell this is something he wants to stop before it gets off the ground.

"Come on. Come back to me now, Sherlock."

It's not until startlingly blue eyes slide open, dilated and unfocused and blinking vacantly at the sheets, that all hell breaks loose.

His gaze locks onto John, and it is as if a switch has been flipped. Already pallid and shaken, Sherlock is suddenly bone-white, and he _flinches._ He _flinches._ Away from _John._ He flinches backwards and John is already starting to withdraw, but Sherlock's face contorts and he jolts in the other direction.

"Get _off!"_ he's snarling, _"get off of me,_ " and John has no time to react before Sherlock jolts so far away that it's right off the fucking bed.

 _"Sherlock!_ Jesus Christ--" John scrambles around on his own side, because Sherlock hit the floor hard, and all he can think about is him hitting his head. All he can think is Sherlock getting hurt, _again,_ and Jesus fuck--

"I said don't touch me!"

"It's all right," he commands, barely listening, "just let me--"

"Get off--"

"You might've--"

 _"I said don't touch me!"_ he roars, and _oh._

Sherlock is not having a flashback or a panic attack. He knows exactly where he is, and he is looking right at John, and he recognises him. That is the problem.

Sherlock is looking at him, and recognises John, and wants him away from him.

John freezes in place, his heart lunged up into his throat. It feels as if he's just been doused in a bucket of ice water.

He knows what it's like, to not want to be touched after a nightmare. He knows what it's like to need to be alone, and to be jumpy, and hypersensitive, and flinch away from even the feel of the sheets on his skin.

That is not what this is.

Sherlock doesn't want to be touched by _him._

Sherlock's panting breaths continue past clenched teeth, the only sound in the room at all. He stares up at John with brilliant, huge eyes, sweat drying on his hairline and fists in his lap, and-- oh, god. He's flinched away. From John.

The moment stretches on. Second by second, breath by breath. Sherlock shivering on the floor, and John's feet stuck in concrete.

Then it's broken. Not by any progress from Sherlock, but instead, by the rising of a wail from the baby monitor.

Sherlock keels over first, pressing even further back into his corner and twisting away. He can't seem to manage looking at John at all, but by the look on his face, he clearly at least understands what is happening. If John has to leave him for a minute, he's not abandoning him.

More to the point, right now?

John thinks the only way for them to get anywhere at all is if he does leave after all, and give Sherlock that moment away from him that he so badly needs.

John still hesitates, lingering on the edge of the bed. It's dark in the room, but he looks at Sherlock as closely as he can. There's no blood that he can see, and there shouldn't be. The room is carpeted and the bed low to the floor, everything clearly meant for a patient that was expected to be taking more than a few falls as he built his strength back up. The worst of it was the panic. Panic that has already faded in place of a crushing, red-faced shame.

He swipes up the baby monitor, and stands.

"I'm going to go check on Anthony," he says, thumbing the mute button. His son's wailing abruptly turns into a thin echo down the hall, a noise that seems to make Sherlock feel even worse, because they both knew what woke him up and it was Sherlock, yelling, not one minute ago. "Just for a few minutes. You'll be okay?"

 _"Obviously,"_ Sherlock spits. No matter how rude he tries to get the word to be, his voice is shaking.

John swallows again, and withdraws without another word.

Anthony's room is just down the hall. Originally meant to be John's room as well, but, well, here they are. It's the only baby-proofed room in the house and John doesn't know what they're going to do when his son starts crawling and walking, but he's not now, so he just slips into the room and picks him up mid-cry.

"It's okay," he promises, moving to allow a wet face to bury into his neck. "Shh, shh, it's okay. Your godfather just had a bad dream; it's okay."

He hasn't told Sherlock that, yet. Because he knows Sherlock will interpret it in all the wrong ways, not as a sign of faith but instead as pressure to be able to look after his son when right now, he's not able to look after himself. But it's what he is.

There is no one else that can possibly fill the role of godfather, save for John's best man.

John hushes the wet sniffling again, rubbing his son's back, and starts to think.

This is certainly not the first nightmare that he has seen Sherlock have. It's not even the first time that he's woken up and flinched away from being touched. They don't talk about these sorts of things, him and Sherlock, but John isn't an idiot. He knows what traumatic flashbacks look like, he knows what a hypersensitive startle response looks like, and nightmares, and he's also just spent ten months helping to give an unresponsive Sherlock sodding sponge baths. He's seen the scars, and when he'd agreed to have Sherlock under his care at Baker Street, he'd read the medical report. He knows some of what happened to him in his two years away and he's seen some of what that looks like on his worst nights.

But he has never seen this before. And... John doesn't know what could've caused it.

He racks his mind, and he has literally no idea. Even if he's done something wrong, something that's inadvertently hurt Sherlock, it's never something that could've prompted this reaction. Not even from a nightmare.

He doesn't know what he's done wrong. He's hurt Sherlock and bloody hell, he doesn't even know _how._

Anthony quiets down. He stops crying and starts to calm again, his head still against his shoulder, one tiny fist in his shirt. John very gingerly begins to lower him down, and when this doesn't set off a renewed round of crying, breathes a sigh of relief.

He really is an amazing baby. After what has to have been one of the most high-stress pregnancies in the world, and then the first few months of his life, having John be-- be the wreck that he was-- it's as if he can recognise how happy John is now and is happy in return. He's _amazing._

"Thank you," he murmurs, kissing his forehead. "Thank you for-- being as bloody brilliant as your godfather."

Anthony sniffles again, very, very quietly, and is asleep.

John steels himself, and brings himself back to his-- Sherlock's-- room.

Sherlock has relocated back onto the bed. And there he sits, on the edge and with his thin back to John, head twisted away and fingers clutching tightly against the sheets.

"Anthony's back to sleep," he says, for complete lack of anything else. He clears his throat, when Sherlock does not respond. "There's another bed in his room. If you want space for the night, I can--"

_"No."_

"Sherlock," John sighs. Because he knows what Sherlock is going to try to say. He's going to try to say that he's okay, just as he so clearly isn't. "It's fine. I get it. I'm only--"

"No, you _don't_ get it, because you are an _imbecile._ You didn't _do_ anything, anything at all, this--" he groans past clenched teeth and keels over on himself, burying his face in his hands to clutch at his hair. He looks about to tear it out in his own frustration. "It's my fault. It's stupid, _stupid._ It's _hateful._ It's unforgivable _,_ I--"

"You know as well as I do you can't control what you dream about. Yes, even you, Sherlock." John hesitates, and when this does not provoke another furious response, gently, very gently, sits down on his own side of the bed.

So it's not something that he did, then?

But what else could it be? Why else could Sherlock have dreamed something, something about him, that has him this upset?

Sherlock stays hunched over on his own side of the bed. He's wrapped his arms back around himself and clutches at his shirt, his head bowed and twisted away. John aches to just reach out and hold him.

"Talk to me," he implores. "Sherlock. This is not going to get better just by you wishing it away."

"But it _must,"_ Sherlock snarls, his voice cracking. "It simply must. Because it is not logical at all, it is not rational, so I have no option but to--"

He lurches to a halt, rocking faintly back and forth. He reaches up to tear at his hair again and then suddenly balls himself up, his knees to his chest and his arms locked around them, a tiny, compact creation that is as safe as it is closed off. "When I was comatose," he says, rushing the words out, "Mycroft said to me-- in the palace, in the dream that I had-- he told me that I was my own worst enemy. He was correct. I have always been my own worst enemy, and most of the troubles in my life have been a result of me trying to run away from my own mind."

"...Okay." John isn't sure what the point is, but he can tell that Sherlock is, at least, trying to tell him. He settles an inch more onto the bed, at least reassured that Sherlock is no longer going to react badly to his presence. "I'm... sorry that's been your experience."

Sherlock exhales anther angry breath, frustrated again, like John doesn't get it. "No," he snaps, "that's not the _point._ The point is that-- when my subconscious was trying to wake me up, it was... in the end I think it relied on absurdism, an utterly farcical development of events, escalating more and more unbelievable until I realised that was it, that it was _unbelievable_. But before then, it... it must have known, I think. I kept winding up in hospital because that was where I was, wasn't it? But I think what it wanted was to make me miserable. We all want to wake up from a nightmare, yes? And it's-- unfortunate, or... it's _stupid,_ John, honestly, that's all that it is, it's absolutely nothing for you to be concerned about, but I--"

"Sherlock. _Sherlock._ I'm sorry, you're not making sense." He starts to reach for him before flinching back, forcing himself to stay back on his own side of the bed. As utterly _miserable_ as Sherlock looks right now, it is very clear that the very last thing that will help this is John, encroaching again on his space.

Sherlock doesn't talk much about what his experience through those ten months had been like. That's a lie. He doesn't talk about it at all.

The doctor in John is desperately curious. The part that's Sherlock's best friend is concerned, and worried, and doesn't want to make him talk about it just as he just wants to make this better.

With a heavy, exasperated sigh, Sherlock sinks backward, curling on his side. He doesn't move closer to John but he doesn't flinch away from him either. He just looks forlorn. Almost like a stepped on puppy.

"It's obvious," he mutters finally. The words are muffled into his pillow. "Isn't it? You are-- the most important... my subconscious was trying to create as horrible a reality as it could envision and because you are the most..."

Sherlock still seems to be unable to actually say it. But as he continues to roughly beat around the bush about a hundred miles away from it, to John--

The nightmare. Sherlock flinching away from him, shouting for John not to touch him. Recoiling all the way down to the floor. Being... _afraid._

"...Don't make me say it," Sherlock rasps. "You won't want to hear it, John."

John's eyes widen.

Oh, _god._

"I bloody well do. I--" He doesn't even know who's angry at. Himself? Some version of himself that Sherlock's mind created that isn't even real? " _Sherlock._ Fucking _tell me,_ I--"

"No. I don't want to say it and you don't want to hear it, no matter what you think. It wasn't real, John; what gain is there to get out of explaining things that are not real?"

"Because it bothers you!" John starts forward again, his heart racing. He wants to hit something but there's no villain, no criminal, no _bad guy_ here for him to blame. "You're clearly upset by it, I just want... you clearly need to talk--"

Sherlock kicks onto his back with a ragged sigh, arm draped over his face and eyes squeezed shut. "What I _need_ is you. I can not help nightmares and neither can you, and I will not give you mine to see with me. It will not help me for you to agonise over that which never happened, and it will _certainly_ not help me for you to torture yourself with things that you never did!"

He still doesn't know what to say. He's still horrified and wants to hit something, but until they invent a way for him to break into Sherlock's mind palace, there's nothing he can do. He just sits here and stares at him and fights in every tense breath past clenched teeth.

Why does this have to be so hard? After everything that they've already gone through, everything they've already survived, everything Sherlock is _still_ trying to recover from, why is there this, too?

He'd have thought that the past months would've made his anger at Mary cool. Sherlock is alive, and recovering. He has made leaps and bounds in just the last few weeks alone. This is so much more than he'd ever dared to expect and it is the first time that her claim that she'd _saved Sherlock's life_ has even come close to having the slightest bit of merit.

But he's not any less angry.

He thinks it's worse, actually. If Mary appeared at the door tomorrow, Mrs. Watson, unarmed and pleasant and asking only to see her son, John would--

He _hates her._ She did this to Sherlock. She is the reason that over a year after being shot here he is, having nightmares, about... about John.

And there is nothing at all that he can do about it.

He takes in another shaking, meant to be deep breath. His heart is thudding in his chest and it feels like he's swallowed molten lead.

"If you... want for me to go." It is _hell_ to get the words out, but he shifts an inch back, clenching the sheets in his fists. "Look, I understand, Sherlock. It can only be for tonight, if that's--"

"No, you _don't!_ You do _not_ understand!" Sherlock cries, and for all that he is hurt and scared he sounds _furious,_ too. He bolts around to haul John back onto the bed by his wrist, his eyes huge and almost gleaming in the dark. "Have you not been listening to me? Did I not just _tell you_ that the absolute worst thing I am capable of conceptualising is my life without you in it?!"

"Okay, okay, Sherlock, just--"

"You were gone and I couldn't-- I can't do it alone, John. I _can't,_ don't you see?" he pants, he's panting, now, and his nails scrape into John's wrist as cutting and deep as little knives. "I'm nothing without you, John, nothing at all. You were my conductor of light but now there is no light at all without you, it's all darkness, and I--"

 _"Okay,_ Sherlock," John interrupts. "Stop this; stop it now. Slow down and breathe." He speaks firmly, back on the bed without any hesitation at all. He squeezes Sherlock's hands in his and pulls him upright, and maybe he uses the proximity to calm himself down too. "Slow down. Breathe. _Breathe_ with me, it's okay. I'm not going anywhere."

Sherlock does, looking embarrassed and angry and gutted all at once, his eyes wet with the ferocity of it all. He pants and curls into himself and doesn't look at John, and the only reason John doesn't tumble off the edge after him is because he knows that's the best way to make this even worse than it already is.

He feels wretched.

Sherlock's own fatigue waits in the shadows, just as always, and it swallows him up when deep breaths finally manage to stave off the impending panic. His bright eyes are already drooping, still unable to look at him, now in an intensifying misery and shame, and his fingers loosen on John's. But he has made his wishes perfectly clear. Even if he can't say it again, John knows exactly what it is that Sherlock wants.

He pulls Sherlock down again. It's sickeningly familiar-- the feeling of guiding cold, long, unresponsive limbs, because is what Sherlock is right now. He has gone completely unresponsive, and does not resist or help in any way as John tugs him back under the sheets. He just lies there, shellshocked and utterly still, first as John gets him down onto his side, and then with the blankets pulled over them both.

Sherlock doesn't resist or help him at all. He just watches John, blinking slowly, looking at him in the dark.

"I will protect you," he finally says evenly. "From everything. And with everything that I have. Even from your own head, if I have to."

Sherlock's tired mouth quirks again. "That would be tremendously ambitious of you." But he rolls his hand sideways to gently squeeze at one of John's fingers, just for a moment, before letting go. "I would like to see you try."

It's not a challenge. It's the truth; John can hear it in his voice and see it on his face.

John nods back.

* * *

Sherlock's recovery continues.

Life re-establishes itself, like the first days of spring after an unrelenting snowstorm of a winter. John keeps going to the surgery during the week, and as the therapy continues, Sherlock gains strength and stops being so completely worn down at the end of the day, and John finally starts to feel like he has his best friend back. He snips at Mycroft on the phone and lets Mrs. Hudson fuss over him and shares private smirks with John, and it's the best feeling he's had in _years._

John even feels confident enough to start letting Sherlock watch Anthony, at least for a few hours. He's strong enough to move himself around if he has to and is able to call John if he needs to, but more than that, he can tell it means the world to Sherlock. To actually have some concrete signs of John's approval, of his own recovery, to know that he's trusted, and no longer doing so poorly that he needs a minder just as much as Anthony.

He still hasn't told Sherlock that he's Anthony's godfather yet. Soon, he thinks. Not yet.

Everything is going so much better.

Which is why, when Sherlock is possessed by the foulest of foul moods, one Saturday morning, John isn't sure what to make of it.

He doesn't have PT today-- he can't do it every day, and since John has the weekends off, those tend to be the days that Sherlock takes off, too. Sherlock refuses to be seen in public until he can manage on crutches alone, so he at least tries to hustle Sherlock to the enclosed garden (because of course there's a bloody enclosed garden) on days when the weather is nice, but today it's cold outside, too cold for there to be any sense in braving the angry wind, so today, Sherlock hunkers into the sofa, scowls from his nest of blankets at his laptop, and pretends John does not exist.

He knows Sherlock isn't working for Mycroft. He has his earbuds in, but instead of typing, one of his hands is occupied with squeezing the life out of a stress ball. He knows if he asked, Sherlock would claim it was just him complying with his therapists' suggestions for his off-days, but that's not what it is. He can't sit still and this is as close as he can get to pacing right now.

John doesn't know what's wrong, and as he learned a long time ago, Sherlock is like a dog with a bone. He's not going to cheer up on his own, but he's also not going to stop chewing on it until he's good and ready.

He camps out on the floor with Anthony, and patiently lets his genius stew on the sofa.

Finally, the hammer falls.

Sherlock sits straight upright, his earbuds yanked out into his lap one by one. He takes a breath several times, starting to open his mouth only to stop each time, his eyes hard.

"I think that I require your assistance," he says finally.

John smiles a little over his shoulder, setting the blocks in his hands on the floor. So the bear has finally come out of his cave. "What's up?"

Rather than answer, Sherlock simply pushes his laptop around on his knees, turning the screen to face John. He's still scowling and returns to mangling his stress ball the moment his hands are free, glowering anywhere he can look that isn't at John.

The laptop shows what looks like a set of tax forms. Tab after tab, tax forms for a charity organisation, some dating back over ten years. John isn't sure what to make of them until he clicks to a new tab, and finds himself in Sherlock's email, instead-- looking at a message from Lestrade.

"It's a case," he breathes. "It's a cold case! You're taking cases again! Sherlock, this is great! This is so great, why didn't you--"

"It's a waste of time," Sherlock cuts in, bristling like an angry cat. "I can't solve it."

John frowns at the documents for a moment, still swiping between tabs. "You _haven't_ solved it," he corrects. "Because you've been going at it alone. And ended up lost without your blogger."

"That... would be the idea, yes."

He knows what's underneath those words, there. That what Sherlock is afraid of is that he's not lost without his blogger-- he's lost entirely, now. That he's lost what it is that makes him so good at what he does, and his conductor of light is useless if there's no light to conduct.

Well, John is not about to let his pessimist go with _that_ lying down.

He sets himself up on the sofa next to him, balancing the laptop on his knees, where they both can see it. "Someone's embezzling," he said, reading from Lestrade's email. "And he wants you to find who?"

Sherlock grimaces through another nod. "There's certainly missing funds. And the paperwork should take me to who is responsible, but. It's not quite-- it hasn't..."

He's stiff and unmoving now, like each word is formed through a stiff coating of ice. He glares at his knees, chewing on what he's trying to say and unable to get it out. He looks disgusted with himself."

"It hasn't clicked," John fills in.

Sherlock tilts his head downwards once, in one stiff, faintly relieved nod.

So John sighs, swallowing back the sting of old sadness in his throat, and returns his attention to the laptop.

Analysing financial forms isn't exactly something that John has a wealth of experience with. But that's not what Sherlock is asking him for it, is it? Sherlock doesn't need John to think _for_ him, and he never could to begin with.

What he does have experience with, what he _is_ good at, is figuring out what makes Sherlock tick.

"Any reason you're shuffling between a dozen tabs?" he asks after a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "You hate working with electronic files. You say you can't visualize the information."

"Because I'm not _supposed to,"_ he snaps, fiery with a sudden vehemence. "It's supposed to be in my head, John! I'm supposed to _see it!"_

"Yeah? So you can't picture a dozen tax forms in your head at once anymore?" He smirks, but makes sure Sherlock can hear the sincerity underneath. "A real loss."

_"John--"_

"You don't even need me for this, Sherlock. You know what the problem is; you said it yourself. You can't juggle all the information when it's in this format? So put it into a different one. I'll go track down something and help you write it down. Print it out. Spell it out with Anthony's blocks." He smiles again to Sherlock's affronted and indignant look, nudging the laptop back against his knee. "And if it doesn't click for you then... that's okay. Seriously. You used to say that they're cold cases for a reason-- sometimes, the answer just isn't there."

Because he knows Sherlock can do this. He's seen him improve, just over these past few months at therapy alone. John has watched Sherlock brighten, quicken, and sharpen himself to a knife's edge. Even if he's out of practice, and even if-- yes-- even _if_ he isn't as good as before... he's still _there._ He can still do this.

He just needs to stop trying to replicate who he'd been before.

Sherlock stares back at him, his face a war of indecision. He works his jaw and his gaze flickers from the screen to John, clearly unwilling to accept for it to be _this_ simple, still frustrated after hours of ramming his head against a brick wall.

 _"Ba,"_ Anthony announces, and throws his stuffed toy from the floor. It bonks Sherlock on the knee, and the spell is broken.

John grins. "I think he's saying he wants lunch. Which you need too, by the way." He starts to stand up, pointedly sliding Sherlock's laptop with him. "You want to take a bit of a break; watch him for me while I grab something?"

It takes a moment, but when the sigh comes, it's one of defeat rather than protest. "You know I don't eat while on a case," he starts, slowly, gingerly, beginning to work his way to the floor. "But if you insist..."

John does insist. If Sherlock wants to starve himself, then he'll need to wait to do that until he's well enough to outrun John and Mrs. Hudson setting plates down in front of him.

He heads towards the kitchen, and the last thing he glimpses, just over his shoulder, is Sherlock, frowning at two colored blocks in his hands with the light of a deduction in his eyes.

He knows that look.

In the end, he's not in the kitchen for very long. It's a fully stocked, five star kitchen that would probably make Mrs Hudson weep, and he's pretty sure the only reason they don't have an equally qualified chef here is because Mycroft knows it would go to waste. Sherlock tends to make a face if anyone but John so much as dares to make his tea-- and he always _knows._ Anthony is still at the age where he's not able to do much more than eat a few tiny handfuls of messy cereal out of John's bowl anyway, and Sherlock often seems to take his cues from him, just because he can. John already dreads the days when Anthony will be old enough to actually properly gang up on him with Sherlock.

He's just finished pouring the tea when the cry comes from the sitting room.

"John! John, I solved it! _J-John!"_

John grins.

_"JOHN!"_

"Knew you could do it," he mutters, and turns to head back into the sitting room. "You mad genius."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback is welcome and appreciated!!! Thank you so much for reading, and stay healthy! <3
> 
> I've finished the final chapter now, so all that's left for me to do is proofread and edit it up. The ending should be up soon!
> 
> [Come say hi on tumblr!](https://problematic-ranowa.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read or engaged along the way!!! It's been fun, and I hope you enjoy!!! <3

In the end, Sherlock lasts five months.

Five months, before the inevitable implosion.

John had seen it coming. Both in general and this incident, specifically. Intensive physical therapy, learning to walk again, being so reliant on other people, is miserably hard on _anyone._ But the lifestyle that Sherlock is accustomed to, _who he is_ and the way his brain works, has promised this from the very beginning as a hell almost specially designed for him. He's surprised that he's lasted this long. He's extremely impressed that he's lasted this long.

But he's seen it coming, all the same. Sherlock has been increasingly frustrated with his slow progress, that he still can't even leave the house because he refuses to be seen in a wheelchair, and the fact that Anthony is starting to learn to crawl now has been a slap in the face. He's bored, he's in pain, he's frustrated, and every attempt John makes to soothe him is increasingly met with bared teeth and an obscenity just barely held behind a curled tongue.

So John is not surprised all that much at all, when one day he gets home from the surgery, and instead of finding his way through to the sitting room, peaks in on the open door to where Sherlock takes therapy and finds a very unusual scene waiting for him.

Sherlock is curled up on the floor at the end of the parallel bars, head resting on one arm and his back to the rest of the room. He has clearly been down there for a while. Even from here, John can see the sweat drying in his ruffled tangles of hair and his shirt, the uncomfortable sprawl that signals that he is in pain. Discomfort radiates from every inch of him.

And across the room, there sits David: quietly thumbing through something on his phone, and, if John's was a more untrained eye-- completely ignoring and outright neglecting his patient.

He glances up at John when he enters the room, meeting his eyes. His frown deepens, and he shakes his head, just once.

John has been a doctor for long enough, and Sherlock's friend in particular, to understand what's happened.

"I'll just go check on Anthony, shall I?" David murmurs, very quietly. The hush of his voice tells him that Sherlock is asleep. "He wouldn't take any pain medication, so I've got his usual dose waiting in his room. If you want a heating pad or anything else, just text me."

He swipes up the the baby monitor and heads to the door, with nothing but another sympathetic pat to his shoulder on the way. Which-- just about tells John exactly how this is going to go.

He takes a deep breath, and gently sets his bag down in David's now unoccupied chair. He waits by the door for just one more moment, steeling himself in every way that he can.

Then, arming himself up for what's going to be the battle of the year, he makes his way for the Sherlock puddle.

His approach was meant to be quiet, at least. But he supposes there's a limit to how restful a nap on the floor can be, because he's just started to move a new chair out by the wall when Sherlock flinches awake like a dog kicking in his sleep.

It takes only an instant, for his expression to shift and the walls to come down. Already, he is pale and frowning and expressionless, all but shut down as he glares still at the floor. He curls up a bit more, tucking his arm to himself, and makes absolutely no attempt to move.

John sighs, and sits down after all.

"Hello," he says. "Have a good nap?"

Sherlock's mouth twitches again. He looks intensely miserable and ashamed, but now picks at the floor, as if he's trying to go for petulant teenager instead of hurting adult. "I was resting my eyes."

"Right." He pauses for another moment, folding his hands together under his chin. "So."

"So."

"...feel like talking about why you wouldn't let David help you up, then?"

Because that is the only explanation. There is no other reason why David would have been sitting there on his phone, calmly scrolling through texts while Sherlock was collapsed on the floor just five feet away from him. There is no other reason why Sherlock would have decided to take a nap on a hard and uncomfortable floor with sweating drying in his hair and his foot still curled around a rubber weight. There is no other reason why his therapist for the day would've left him flopped on his stomach like a dead fish.

"No," Sherlock mutters. The word is barely even audible and with it, he sulks even deeper into his self-contained pile. His face is just starting to flush pink, and it's only going to get worse from here.

John lets out another sigh. "Can I help you up?"

 _"No,"_ he snaps again, biting the word out like a snake. It's higher pitched and cracks and he presses his face into the floor, looking just the side of spitting out the most vile thing he can think of.

Okay. Then he supposes they'll just sit here for a bit, then.

Looking at where Sherlock has ended up, John's best guess is that he'd fallen while working with his therapist. Falling is par for the course; it happens, and it's going to keep happening for a while-- if he were strong enough not to fall, then he'd be strong enough to not need therapy at all. Sherlock has improved a lot in the past couple of months, though. He doesn't need to be picked up and carried wherever he wants to go, and should've been more than capable of getting up on his own.

Which seems to answer why he hasn't, then.

A muscle cramp, would be John's first guess. Probably his arm, by the way he's holding it to his chest. Something preventing him from using his arm, and therefore getting the leverage he needs to work himself up into a chair or hold himself on his feet.

It's probably the reason he doesn't want to let anyone help him now. It's one thing, to allow himself to be helped-- it's quite another, to have to take a step _back_ in his recovery. To have been able to no longer need to have to ask for help, and to have someone carry him, to _know_ he's strong enough to do it on his own but his body betrays him and here they are all over again.

"Five months," Sherlock suddenly spits.

John glances back down to where he's curled up on the floor. He knows where this is going.

Sherlock tenses when nothing comes, his face flushing a brighter red. "Five _months!"_ he cries. "I've been doing this for five _fucking_ months, John, and I'm still crawling on the floor like a _baby."_ He shoots upright, supported up on one trembling arm while the other remains cradled to his chest, his hand a curled claw. _"_ And do not tell me to be patient. _You_ do not tell me this is how it has to be. That it's understandable, and I'm getting better, and I'm okay, because I am _not!_ I'm sick of it! _I'M SICK OF IT, JOHN!"_

Still, he keeps his mouth shut.

He'd never done something like this himself, when he'd been in rehab of his own. He'd never gone quite so far, for any number of reasons, but he'd certainly wanted to. He'd wanted to be horrible and spiteful and cruel, he'd wanted to hit things and scream and give up. And swallowing it all up had gotten to him limping down the street with a cane.

If this is what Sherlock needs, he is more than happy to let him have it.

Sherlock tries to wrench himself to his feet again, shivering and snarling and now scarlet. He struggles, just about slips and falls, sinks back to the floor, panting through bared teeth, and for a moment John thinks he's about to throw something. _"God!"_ he cries, fist clenching, "God, God _damn it!_ This is... this is _your_ fault!"

John is expecting it, for Sherlock's anger to turn on him. He's the only available target, and screaming at something soft and vulnerable takes so much more out of him than just shouting at the ceiling. Thick skin is something that's simply a necessity out of being the best friend of Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock has more than earned himself an outburst by this point, so he's ready for it.

What he's not ready for is for Sherlock to turn on him, his eyes blazing, and howl, "You should've just let me _die!"_

"Wh-- what?"

"Yes?" Sherlock snaps, and he vibrates from head to toe like a snapped string. "You should've! _You_ kept me alive, _you_ kept me breathing when I was just a-- drooling, decaying meat sack, _you_ are the one who made that decision, and for what?! For this?! This! Crawling around on the floor like a worm! Is this what you wanted?! You moved in with me for remarkable and now you need to babysit me more than your infant son; is _this_ what you wanted?! I can't walk, I can't think, I can't _think,_ John, my brain is _everything_ and even that's gone, and without that-- without that, what's-- what is it _worth,_ what is--"

"Fuck you."

Sherlock doesn't even flinch. He looks back up at John with a smile that's feral and cruel, a knife that he's stabbed into his gut and now he wants to twist it. "Am I wrong?" he starts, his eyes ablaze. "I've done the research. I am not _stupid,_ John; even if you reduced my intellectual capacity by half I'd still be smarter than _you._ I shouldn't have woken up at all. The chances of a full recovery from a coma caused by hypoxic injury are barely ten percent. The chances of waking up from one after just the first month decrease, and by the point I was at the statistics are--"

"Fuck. _You."_

John really had meant to let Sherlock have this. Because god knew he'd done his best, god knew John would've lost his mind by this point as well, and shouting at him for feeling frustrated and hurt is the last thing that he wants to do. But Sherlock has landed on his weak spot. Sherlock, in a brutal and effective slice as exact as a surgeon's scalpel, has done exactly what Sherlock tends to do, and cut straight down to the very core of what will hurt his target the most. And he can tell that Sherlock is far from done-- but by god, John _is._

"What are you telling me?" he snaps. He's on his feet now, too, for once towering over Sherlock, and he could honestly slap him. He won't, he'd _never,_ but Sherlock is still smiling and John wants to wrench it right off his face. "It means that little to you, hmm? So you have a bad fucking day, and that's it? Throw in the towel? So you can't walk right now-- like _millions_ of other people in the world, by the way, Sherlock-- and that's it, not worth it? You're only smarter than 99% of the rest of the world instead of 99.9%, and that's it? You're done? After everything you've already come through, no matter all the people that care about you, no matter about _me,_ Sherlock, yeah?! How many times do you have to die and try to drag me with you for you to get that it's not all about you?!"

"Oh, _please,_ J--"

_"Fuck you, Sherlock!"_

He tears himself away from it before he says something that he'll know he'll regret. He turns away from Sherlock's terrible, broken smile, all the sharp edges of him like shattered glass, and he doesn't leave the room but instead kicks the nearest stupid, soft, padded thing that he can. A rubber weight bounces harmlessly against the floor and behind him he hears Sherlock's breaths stutter for the first time.

Because underneath it all-- underneath the anger, and the tantrum, and all the things that he knows are just Sherlock lashing out because he's in pain and hurt and everything else--

There's something in there that's the truth.

Because of course there is.

And it's not something that John has ever wanted to talk about.

He stays with his back to Sherlock for as long as he has to, working his breaths and his temper under control. Behind him, Sherlock keeps his silence as well, but it's not until John finally chances the smallest look at him that he sees his own black anger has cooled as well. He's curled around himself on the floor, his head down, and sulks instead of seethes. He picks at his socks and glares at the floor, and does not look at John. He does not even come close to it.

A red hot seed of anger still bristles in John's stomach. He's _angry._

But he needs to say this, too, and right now, that comes first.

"When it... when it happened. When we realised that you were in a coma, and-- probably weren't about to wake up any time soon."

Sherlock does not react in any noticeable way. He continues to scowl at his socks and pick stray threads loose. It's that lack of reaction, that lack of _anything at all,_ that tells him he's being heard.

"You had brain activity. You were still _there,_ Sherlock. I know that you'd never want to live like that, but you were right there, you were right in front of me, and-- even your _doctor_ said to give you time, Christ, Sherlock, what was I supposed to do? I had to give you a chance. I _had_ to."

Even though John had known the numbers, just as well as Sherlock.

Even though John knew that that was what the doctors of _all_ coma patients said. _Give them time. There's still a chance. There's always a chance._

What they didn't say was that they didn't mean to give the patient time at all.

They were trying to give the patient's loved ones time. To accept reality, and to let go.

Because patients in a coma for that long don't just _wake up._

Sure, anything can technically happen. Patients can wake up, like Sherlock did. But it's already a fight against the odds, and when the coma has stretched from weeks into months into half a year and on-- it doesn't happen. It doesn't. And he had known, with every fiber of his being, that the last thing in the world Sherlock would've ever wanted was to be kept artificially alive, fed through a tube, when he would never wake up again.

But he hadn't been able to do it.

"We wanted to give you a chance," he says again, then blinks. His eyes are suddenly stinging and he presses them shut, forcing the grief back. He doesn't want to look at Sherlock. "We all agreed it was the right thing. That we'd take you home to Baker Street, that we'd get you into clinical trials-- whatever it took--"

"Clinical trials are statistically unhelpful, for patients that have been comatose for longer than six months."

It's the first time Sherlock has spoken up again, and when John looks back at him it makes his friend flinch, as if he expects another outburst. "Statistically," he says again, still talking to his feet, "I only mean--"

"I've already watched you die once, Sherlock," he rasps. "I watched you step off a rooftop right in front of me. I couldn't... I couldn't do it again."

Sherlock flinches again. This time, every trace of anger in him has evaporated, and in its place, grief takes root in John's stomach.

It had been that simple. He's watched Sherlock die once and it had destroyed him.

He had not been able to sit there and tell them to give up. He had physically been incapable of opening his mouth and telling his physician to stop treatment; to pull the feeding tube out, and leave John sitting there slowly watching his best friend starve to death.

Sherlock looks nearly stricken. Because they don't talk about this, Sherlock's suicide, what it did to John, what it did to both of them. But they don't talk about _anything,_ really, do they? It's why Sherlock jumped off a rooftop four years ago and the only reason John knows he did it for him is because Mycroft told him over his comatose body. It's why they're half a year into this and this is the very first time Sherlock has let himself be anything but teeth-grittingly patient. Maybe he's thought John would lose his own patience if Sherlock stopped pretending as if the ground were littered with eggshells.

Which is why they're now sitting here months and months into this, and it's the very first time he's acknowledged _I know this wasn't what you would've wanted._

He slides down the wall to sit on the floor, because if Sherlock's down there he might as well be too. "It wasn't indefinite. Mycroft said that... we would talk about it. He agreed we needed to give you a chance, and I was your medical proxy anyway, so it wasn't his call, but he agreed we at least had to give you a chance. He said that-- he said after it... if we gave you a year, twelve months, and there was still... no change, then.... we would talk about what to do next."

John still wouldn't have been able to do it. Not even then. He knew the statistics, he knew the necessity behind Mycroft's suggestions, that it was unfair and _cruel_ to keep Sherlock's body alive when he would never wake up, when it was _not_ what Sherlock would've wanted, but-- he still wouldn't have been able to. He would've had to hand the power of attorney back to Mycroft and let him sign the last form.

Sherlock sits quietly for a moment, finally folded into something that's closer to a normal sitting position instead of curled up on the floor. "So I beat your deadline by two months."

It's John's turn to flinch.

Yeah. He did. Because he is a miracle and a marvel and he woke up _knowing the year,_ Sherlock woke up. He beat every odd in every book. And John should've known he would, because this is Sherlock Holmes, he is exceptional to every detail-- but that's what everyone wants to think. _Everyone_ wants to believe that _their_ loved one is special and unique and exceptional, that _theirs_ will be the one to beat every odd against them, and while there is something to be said for the patient's state of mind and its effect on recovery, while Sherlock _is_ exceptional--

He hadn't believed Sherlock was going to wake up.

If he'd taken only a few weeks more...

"I'm sorry," he says. And Sherlock says it with him, and then they both just stop together. They look at each other, and John feels about as terrible as Sherlock looks, and he has no idea what else to say. He's not even exactly sure what it is, specifically, that he's apologising for, just that the sentiment is real. He is sorry.

John takes in a deep breath, willing himself to calm down. His throat still stings but he smooths his shirt down, and proceeds back across the room to help Sherlock up off the floor. Whatever simmering resentments and stubbornness from before have at least cooled enough to allow that much.

But Sherlock's hand clenches around his, and he says, once again, "I'm sorry."

"Sherlock--"

"I'm sorry," he murmurs again, his blue eyes dropping away from John. "I never meant... I didn't mean to imply that... you should've..." He swallows audibly and shifts even more into himself, as if he can't look up from the floor.

John, after a moment of thick silence, joins him.

"What would you have us do?" he asks him, as neutrally as he can. It's not meant as a challenge. He genuinely wants to know. "If something like this happened again... what choice would you want us to make?"

"I don't--" Sherlock flinches and swallows, looking acutely miserable. He drops his head and runs his hand through his limp hair. It's probably a horribly unfair question to ask but Sherlock is the only one who can answer it, and after a silence he just closes his eyes, turning liquid under John's hand. "I trust you."

He trusts John. After everything he's just heard today, he _trusts_ John.

"...Okay," he says thickly, and nods. "Okay."

Another moment passes, with Sherlock still staring at his own toes and huddled and small, and John can't keep silent. He has to go on, he has to. "I really thought there was a chance, Sherlock. For a long time I really did. If there hadn't been, if-- if you'd hadn't had brain activity, or... I could've done it. I wouldn't have done that to you."

"I know." He moves closer to John, suddenly trembling, and he barely has the time to wrap his arm around him before Sherlock just _drops,_ sagging sideways and his face fallen into his shoulder like a felled tree. "I'm just-- I'm so _tired."_

"I know. I know, god. It's okay." John hesitates, feeling Sherlock's back rise and fall under his hand. He's not crying, he's not even breathing hard, but what he feels instead is such a deep _exhaustion_ and despair. Instead he suddenly knows that even if Sherlock could get there on his own, he'd still have to carry him anyway, because the crushing fatigue of _everything_ taking _so much_ effort has taken its toll and he just can't do it anymore. Not today.

John holds still for another few moments, his heart in his throat. _I'd take it from you if I could. I'd take all of it._

What Sherlock needs, however, is not useless platitudes.

"Do you want to take a break?" he asks, keeping his voice low. "Just for a few days. It's almost the weekend, anyway. Just until Monday."

Sherlock tenses again, his neck muscles bunching under John's hand. "What for?"

"Because you're exhausted and tired and you've done really, really well and deserve a break?"

"What-- _for?"_ he asks again, and it doesn't sound as if he's playing dense. He honestly doesn't get it. "I'm just being... dramatic. A drama queen. Like you said. Nothing's _wrong_ with me, John, I just--"

"Okay, no, _no."_ He sits back and holds Sherlock by the shoulders, this time forcing him to meet his eyes, whether he wants to or not. "Physically, maybe not, but your mental state is important too, especially in long-term recovery like this. Your brain is just as important as your body and if you're feeling like this, then forcing yourself to keep going is not going to help you. You shouldn't be feeling this badly, Sherlock."

He can tell it doesn't fully click. It doesn't _register_. Sherlock has spent his entire life on such a different playing field from the rest of the world, with such different standards for himself, the world expecting him to _meet_ those standards, that he genuinely doesn't see the sense in what John is saying. He's probably never had anybody in his life ask him the simple question _could you use a break?_

So John sucks in another steadying breath, and without waiting for anything further, takes charge.

He pulls Sherlock up to his feet, moving the few steps as quickly as he can to set him down in the nearest chair with a gentle _thud._ "Okay," he says again, crouching down to be on his eye level. "Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to go grab your pain meds, and be back with you in a second. Then, I'm going to text the therapist for tomorrow, and tell her we're taking a few days off. We'll start again on Monday. Yes?"

Sherlock blinks.

It's a bit out of their usual in a lot ways. But John can tell, just by the way Sherlock is looking at him, that it's necessary. Sherlock usually tries to do everything that he can on his own, and get prickly and harassed when John attempts to help any more than is absolutely necessary, and John gets it-- establishing his independence is incredibly important, and Sherlock believing he's capable of it and being determined to try is so much better than the alternative. But right now, Sherlock looks like one throbbing collection of bruises and exhaustion, and he knows if he lets Sherlock try to take the lead... all Sherlock wants to do right now is collapse into a ball on the sofa.

John sits with him for a few more moments, gauging where he is and whether it really is a wise idea to leave right now. The sooner they get out of here, the better, but the last thing he wants to do is to have Sherlock feeling abandoned right now, even if it'd only be for a few minutes.

He takes in a deeper breath, and starts to form the words in his head.

"I've been thinking," he says. "How would you feel about being Anthony's godfather?"

Sherlock spends the next several moments looking as if a switch has turned off in his head.

"Godfather," he repeats finally, forming the word as if he's tasting it in his mouth. He's completely unreadable; whatever it is that he's thinking, it's hidden behind features like stone and glassy eyes. "Since I am presuming you are not asking for me to follow the Catholic tradition and handle all matters pertaining to religious education-- and I assure you that you would be very disappointed in the results if you did-- then, what... what, exactly, does that... entail?"

"Well. ...nothing, really. Nothing at all beyond what you already do." John squeezes his wrist, in the face of continued unresponsive silence. "You're already one of the only people he recognises, Sherlock, and he loves you. At this rate you might as well be his second parent already, and-- I _know_ you'd take care of him if something happened to me, because yes, Sherlock, I know you can--"

Sherlock finally flinches a little, his mouth tightening, but other than that there is still no response. It takes John another moment to finally figure out exactly what he wants to say.

"It's a label. For other people," he says firmly. "You are his other parent. _My flatmate's son_ isn't what he is to you and that's not what you are to me. I know that you don't need a piece of legal paperwork or a fancy word to define anything to yourself, but... I think I'd appreciate it, actually. So that I have a way to say to everyone who you really are. So that even idiots will understand."

"Everyone is an idiot," Sherlock points out, but his voice is hoarse. He shifts and swallows, watching John with a new, gentle softness on his face. "Godfather."

John waits.

"That would... be amenable," he says finally-- and that's that. It is as simple as that. "Godfather."

All this time worrying about it. And this was all that he'd had to do. All he'd had to do was ask.

Because it changes nothing. It's an easy label for a relationship that already exists and defies definition, but he's not asking for Sherlock to do anything more than love him and Anthony.

Sherlock already does.

John squeezes his arm again, and stands. "Ready to lie down, then?"

"I'm filthy," Sherlock mutters, making a face. He tugs on his shirt and his expression twists, this time in disgust.

"Then I'll run you a bath, too. Okay?

He makes another face, but it's exhausted more than anything else. He looks like he's about to keel over, but a hot bath will help the pain just as much as a paracetamol, and he knows it'll help Sherlock feel better, too. Less like an invalid. Less hopeless. So he waits for the nod that he knows he's going to get, and when it finally comes, he just gives him a perfunctory squeeze at his shoulder, and then, he lets go.

It's not until he's in the hallway, and safely out of Sherlock's line of sight, that he pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts writing a text to Sarah.

If Sherlock's taking the next few days off, then so is he.

* * *

The weather, it seems, is on Sherlock's side.

The next morning, they're both woken up by the sound of the rain outside. It's par for course, for London weather, but John can tell by the sly smirk on Sherlock's face alone that he's luxuriating in the knowledge that he'll have the excuse to stay inside.

Sherlock stretches like a long and lazy panther cat, flexing his toes and his back to lie almost longer than the bed itself. The look on his face alone, the vanished tension and the refreshed light in his eyes and and the slightest hint of a painless smirk; it's all enough for John to know that yesterday was a smart choice. Sherlock needs this break, and John has made the right decision in giving it to him.

"I have a case," he announces, his voice low and rumbling, his hair wild and falling over one eye. It's the look of a cat that had got the cream. "Lestrade texted."

"Do you ever sleep?" John sits up, rubbing his eyes. Sherlock's contentment is like a warm beam of sunlight for him to bask in. "Breakfast first."

The pout he gets in answer is token. Sherlock isn't in his twenties anymore, and for that matter, neither is John; he needs to sleep, and eat, and sometimes he needs to take his time and take a break. The fact that Sherlock accepts that now is a miracle-- but it's not the first miracle that he's pulled out for John.

 _I love you,_ he wants to say.

It doesn't matter in what way. He gets that now. It doesn't matter if Sherlock doesn't do relationships. It doesn't matter if they do or don't have sex. It doesn't matter the particulars of what John wants, either, because he still doesn't know.

What matters is whatever relationship they want to have, it will work. There's not going to be any more fake engagements to break into an office, and there's not going to be any more weddings with flowers and champagne and a pretty white dress. There's not going to be any more fake suicides, and nobody is going to get shot ever again. This is it, for John, and he can tell it's it for Sherlock too. There's not going to be anybody else.

He doesn't say it, because he can tell Sherlock doesn't need to hear it.

He knows it.

It's taken months and months and months, but Sherlock finally seems to have gotten it into his head that John loves him just as much as he loves John, and that he's not going anywhere.

It's a weight off John's shoulders, too.

* * *

Sherlock _makes breakfast._

Another minor miracle.

"Domestic bliss," John teases, waiting with Anthony in his lap. His job is to keep his son from crawling underfoot, throwing his plastic cup, and in general making a mess-- it's just as much of a job as Sherlock's, at this point. "I could get used to this."

Sherlock shoots him an eviscerating look, his eyes bright and gleaming and sea-green. His phone's timer starts vibrating in his hand, and he swivels back to the stove. "Don't count on it, I should think."

It's not a miracle, really. Not quite. Sherlock does not do it out of any feelings of sentiment or upon being possessed by a sense of domestic bliss of his own. He does it simply to prove that he can.

Oh, he'll whinge and moan for John to pour him a glass of water when the sink is a foot away, _John, how could you deny the disabled invalid-- this is abuse-- I am going to DIE, John--_ but that's only for when it's something that they both know that he can do. If there's no question about whether he's capable of it or not, then there's nothing to prove.

But for something like this? When it comes to a task on where there's a genuine question on whether or not he can do it? He always has to try.

They'd ascertained pretty quickly that he was capable of it. It's a kitchen designed specifically for a patient that has trouble standing, and Sherlock is nothing if not resourceful. There've been a few mishaps, sure, but in the end they had been nothing but passing moments of frustration in his overall recovery.

The problems hadn't been physical.

Oh, Sherlock claimed otherwise. _You know that I've never cooked in my life, John,_ he'd drawled, over a plate of chicken burnt to nearly a blackened crisp, potatoes so watery they were nearly soup, and a glass of ice water set in front of his son while Anthony's milk is held in one hand. It's not true. Sherlock is a graduate chemist, and he lived on his own for ten years before meeting John. He is fully capable of following a recipe and they both know it.

Or-- he might've been. But John, after three burned eggs and two raw ones, a set off smoke alarm, and more sulking, red-faced, and silent Sherlocks than he could count, had finally started to put two and two together.

It's the multi-tasking. It's trying to carry on timers in his head. It's forgetting he'd already salted the chicken so he does it again, and a third time, until not even sweet, compassionate Molly can pretend it's edible and they call for takeaway instead.

It's the stubborn refusal to admit that he just might _need help._

John has at least worn down that barrier, a bit. Sherlock still dislikes asking for help or relying on him for it, but he has, at least, made the tacit admittance, through gritted teeth and strained shoulders, that he understands he needs it. He sets timers on his phone, now; he makes checklists, and their cabinets are colour-coded in a system more mind-spinning than the sock index.

He's not exactly a gourmet chef, and today of all days, John would really rather just take care of him. He doesn't want to sit here and watch Sherlock stress. But being taken care of, being-- _god forbid_ , pampered-- would just make this worse. He knows that Sherlock feels so much better to actually _succeed_ at something, even something like this, even something small and ordinary and normal.

He'll call Angelo for dinner. And after this, he's making sure that Sherlock does not do anything at all but enjoy himself.

Anthony, with another small huff and squirm in John's arms, plants his hands on the table. He doesn't quite try to seriously stand on John's legs, not yet-- but it's an attempt, and it's not the first time. He's the right age for it, and he's started to squirm and make strides at it for weeks now.

Sherlock watches, a small twitch playing about his mouth. "He might've been watching me in physio a bit too much," he points out, nodding to the attempt. "He's going to learn to walk before me, isn't he."

"...Yeah. Probably." Sugarcoating it, or outright lying about it, isn't going to help. "It's probably a lot easier to learn to walk when you're two feet tall instead of six, you know-- that's a much shorter fall."

 _"Ga,"_ Anthony says, and resettles back on John's legs with a heavy _thump._

With a roll of his eyes, Sherlock rolls back to them with breakfast in his hand and his face settled again into a calmer smirk. He shares a look with John, and then, leans forward to look his son right in the eye, as serious as a heart attack. _"La petit-déjeuner,_ Watson."

Anthony says, _"Gagaga,"_ and knocks his cup back over onto the table.

John grins. "Told you he's a bit too young to be learning French." He pauses, taking a plate from Sherlock's hands. "Or English, for that matter..."

"There is no such thing. His ability to vocalize spoken language may still require a few months of development yet, but he is still listening, and to some degree, understanding. Perhaps babies only seem mindless because that is how the populace at large insists upon speaking to them." Sherlock snags a bite off of John's plate, as if he wasn't the one who'd put it there in the first place, and again looks level at Anthony. "My first words were a complete sentence, in English. My second ones were a complete sentence in German. Can you say _merci,_ Anthony?"

He can't. But John will never, _ever_ tire of watching Sherlock try, and he will never tire of the adoring ways that Sherlock looks and speaks to his son.

He'd sooner take a bloody mad genius speaking to him in English and French from sentence to sentence, risking burning the eggs, and threatening to turn tricks in his wheelchair than he would a white picket fence and _normal_ any day of the week.

* * *

The case that Lestrade texted about, as it turned out, is an especially gristly triple murder. The crime scene is a second-story walk-up, so Sherlock wouldn't be going to it today, rain or no rain, but the pictures files in his email are a second best-- and by the way Sherlock's eyes light up about them, they are one that he is determined to make the best of.

John sits on the sofa with his laptop, reading off the details of the case file while Sherlock himself is swathed in an electric blanket on the floor, radiating heat and comfort as he sticks his tongue out in concentration and builds a crime scene model. Mostly with Anthony's blocks, but then they run out of blocks, so an empty tea cup and the ever trusty teddy bear join in, playing the role of the first dead body. Sherlock spends a long moment frowning at the bear, his face creasing in concentration, his steepled fingers tapping together in a rhythmic, steady cadence.

He swaps the bear for a salt-shaker, nudges one block structure an infinitesimal centimetre to the left, and keeps on thinking.

It's-- amazing.

It's his day off, and he's solving a murder that has the best of Scotland Yard stumped. He can't even go to the crime scene, and he's still _solving it._ He's solving it with a baby and a teddy bear and John as a sounding board and information-categoriser from the sofa. In a defiance of every bloody statistic in every bloody book and he's doing it as naturally as breathing.

"I think I have what I need," Sherlock announces, gaze flickering from John to his model. "Give me a moment to think."

"I'll be here," John promises.

The look he gets in return is warm and amused and grateful and confident, and all in all a testament to everything that Sherlock is. "I know," he says. His eyes drop back down to the model, and he once again nudges another block.

John pauses for another moment, to just quietly watch him. He watches how Anthony again rocks back and forth, not quite standing, not quite sitting, and he watches how Sherlock's eyes glaze as he is lost into his palace but he still reaches a hand out to steady him if he should tumble.

He smiles slightly, closes the email from Lestrade, and opens one up to Mycroft instead.

* * *

_Mary,_

_I'm writing to you as I watch Sherlock and my son play blocks together. Sherlock is attempting to model a crime scene with them, while Anthony is learning depth perception, coordination, and dexterity by taking aim for his face with his stuffed animal._

_Turns out I'm suited for domestic bliss after all, I suppose._

_I can't say that I wish I had never met you. Anthony would not be here without you, and I'm not entirely sure I would be, either. I will always be grateful for those two things. My life will always be better because I met you._

_But, I can say the same for Sherlock as well. I wouldn't be here without him, and by extension, neither would my son. The difference is that Sherlock makes me happy. You might have done the same, once. But now, I'm not happy because of you. I'm happy in spite of you._

_You both lied to me. You both nearly broke me. But Sherlock did it because he had no choice. He did it to keep me alive, even if in doing so it ruined my life, and even if he was terrible to me when he came back. No matter how angry I can be at him for it I know that he did what he did for me. You did it for yourself. Do you remember? You admitted it, that night. You said, "I would lose him forever, and I will never let that happen."_

_I could've forgiven you for lying to me, believe it or not. I forgave Sherlock for a similar sort of lie. But then you didn't just hurt me. You hurt my best friend. You knew what you were doing to him, and you knew what it would do to me if he died, and you did it anyway._

_You killed him, Mary. You shot him, and told us and yourself you saved his life, but what you did? You killed him. You are the reason that he's still in pain. You are the reason he has nightmares. You are the reason that it's been nearly half a year of therapy and he's still in a wheelchair. And you are the reason that I have nightmares, too. You are the reason that I watched my best friend die and it is only because of a miracle that he came back to me. It was over a year ago, Mary, and this is still where we are. It's going to be where we are for a long time, and the only reason we're here at all and not somewhere much worse is because Sherlock is a strong and stubborn son of a bitch that fought his way back to me and onto his own two feet again. It is not because you had the mercy to call the ambulance that you made him need or to not shoot him in the head._

_I suppose that I'm telling you all of this because I want you to know that I'm happy now. I'm happy, and Sherlock is healing, and Anthony is going to grow up healthy and loved. Loved by me, and by Sherlock. I don't know what's happened to you, and I don't want to know. But my family and I are happy now. We somehow managed to get ourselves a miracle, and I would do anything to protect it._

_For what it's worth, I am sorry that I was probably a pretty terrible boyfriend, and a pretty terrible husband._

_But if what you wanted was for me to only be happy so long as it was with you, then we never would've worked out anyway._

_If what you actually wanted was just for me to be happy, then you have your wish._

_Goodbye, Mary._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback is welcome and appreciated!!! Thank you so much for reading, and stay healthy! <3
> 
> I'm probably going to spend a few days proofreading/editing some older stuff that I've already posted before starting on anything new, I think. But I will be back, and I hope to see you next time!
> 
> [Come say hi on tumblr!](https://problematic-ranowa.tumblr.com/)


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